
Class " BY 48 32, 

Book . (.-7,, 7 

OopyrigM"N? 



COFtfRIGRT DEPCSFT. 



Just A Minutei 



MOMENT- READINGS ON SCRIPTURE PASSAGES, 
AND A FEW ON THE GREAT WAR 



BY 

CHARLES FREDERIC GOSS, D.D. 

Author of "The Redemption of David Corson," 
"The Optimist" Etc. 



CINCINNATI 

STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 

1918 









& 



\ 



5\ 



Copyright, 1904, by 
The Sunday School Times Co. 

Copyright, 1918, by 
Stewart & Kidd Company 

All Rights Reserved 



APR 12 1918 
©CI.A494561 



Dedication to 
REVEREND ARTHUR S. HOYT, D.D. 

Professor of Sacred rhetoric in Auburn Theo- 
logical Seminary, my bo^Kood playmate, 
college cKum, and life-long friend, 
tkis book is lovingly dedicated 



Introduction 



NO other phrase in the daily speech of us 
American men and women falls so fre- 
quently from our lips as "Just a minute." 

The telephone girls repeat it a thousand 
times each day. Mothers utter it in response 
to the querulous or insistent claims of their 
children; clerks to impatient customers; nurses 
and doctors to sick people whimpering for 
attention; all people to all other people in all 
the frenzied rush of modern life. "Just a 
minute, just a minute, just a minute." How 
different it is from the Un poco tiempo of the 
Spaniard, which, in reality, is "Never!" 

We mean exactly what we say, and are 
straining every nerve to finish up this present 
moment's task to take the next one up. 

A single minute! What prodigious happen- 
ings have taken place in sixty seconds! A 
single minute has decided the destinies of 
men and nations. They have signed a treaty, 
read a paragraph, a text, a single sentence, 
and a door has opened to a larger life. 

We do not need to read a book to become 
wise unto salvation! A phrase will sometimes 
do. 



Literature is created by a double method. 
In the first place, by expansion, in which we 
take a truth which has been stated in a single 
sentence and elaborate it into a volume. In 
the second place, by contraction, in which we 
take a book and compress it into an epigram. 
The former method suits our days of leisure, 
the latter our hours of fierce endeavor; hours 
in which who reads at all must do so on the 
run. 

The fragments in this little volume have 
been prepared for times like those. They are 
like the tabloid foods which explorers carry 
with them on their expeditions and soldiers 
on their marches. It is a book for callers to 
pick up from a parlor table while waiting for 
a hostess; or visitors to glance at before re- 
tiring in the guest-chamber of a friend. 

May it offer the bread of life to some hungry 
soul in that swiftly-flitting moment which is 
his only opportunity for reading in one of 
those frenzied days through which all of us 
have to pass so often in our high-pitched 
modern life, when 

" We see all sights from pole to pole, 
And nod and glance and bustle by, 
But never once possess our souls 
Before we die." 



VI 



Just a Minute! 



&{p*k> Daxrid was sitting between 
the two gates (2 Sam, 18 : 24), 

Y17HAT was he doing ? Waiting,— that 
* * was all. He had done everything that 
lay in his power, —armed the last soldier, per- 
fected the last plan, given the last command. 
And now there remained nothing but to sit 
quietly and helplesslv between the gates and 
wait while the great events transpired beyond 
the reach of eye or ear or hand. Ah ! but that 
is a thousand times harder than action, or 
even passion. What is more terrible than just 
waiting ? If you have not acquired the art of 
patient waiting, you had better learn it at 
once ; for you will have to sit much of your 
lifetime between the gates, waiting helplessly 
while the forces you have set in operation 
slowly work out their inevitable results. The 
merchant must sit between the gates, and wait 
for the people to whom he has sold his goods 
to earn the money to pay. The author must 
sit between the gates, and wait for the pub- 
lishers to accept or reject his manuscript. 
The sailor's wife must sit between the gates, 
i 



and wait for the winds to blow her husband's 
vessel home. We all reach a point where we 
can do no more, and then — we must just wait. 
Alas ! i ' we usually learn to wait only when we 
have no longer anything to wait for. ' ' Adopt 
the pace of nature ; her secret is patience. 
"Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper 
sprinkle cool patience. ' ' Are you sitting be- 
tween the gates waiting ? Do it with the 
noble dignity of a David. If the messenger 
is to bring you sorrow, receive it with sub- 
mission. 

A 

Wrought great e wonders {Acts 6:8)* 

J DO not say that to "love and help men 
and God ' ' will enable you sooner or later 
to heal the sick and raise the dead. I do not 
say that to "love and help men and God" 
will even make you work great signs and won- 
ders among the people, like those done by 
Whitefield, Wesley, and Moody. But this I 
will say, that, in that little circle where God 
has placed you, the "grace and power" of a 
blameless life of love and helpfulness will work 
wonders beautiful enough for any man. Is it 
no "miracle" to lift the burdens from the 
shoulders of your old father and mother ? to 
soothe the heartaches of some unfortunate 
brother or sister ? to bring joy and hope to 
2 



the soul of a sorrowing neighbor ? If I had 
my choice, to be a wonder-worker on a great 
scale but fail as a son or brother, or to be a 
good son or brother and fail as a wonder- 
worker, I wouldn' t hesitate a minute. 



Fulfil thy ministry {2 Tim. 4 : 5). 

/COMPLETENESS in character is only a 
^-^ little more beautiful than completeness 
of effort. In fact, it is generally the result of 
such effort. A life filled full of service ! Can 
anything be grander ? I wonder why the man 
who coined the word "fulfil" couldn't have 
made it just plain, simple ' ' filfull M ! I love 
to see an honest dairyman fill a quart cup full 
with milk. He makes it run over. It is very dis- 
gusting to see people overflowing with flattery, 
affectation, or the like, but what do you think 
of the man who comes up like a bucket out of 
your grandfather's well, full to the brim, and 
spilling over at every turn of the windlass? 
I know people whose every day is pressed 
down and running over with devotion, good- 
ness, generosity, love. Fill your life up to 
the brim. It will hold as much as the bed of 
the ocean. Who can measure the contents of 
a life like D. L. Moody's, running over at the 
brim like a perennial fountain? Once, after 
3 



traveling a whole day without a drop of water, 
I came to an abandoned Texas farmhouse, 
and let a bucket down into a well a hundred 
feet deep, and heard it strike a dirt bottom. 
No wonder the farmer abandoned the ac- 
cursed spot. And there are lives like this. 
Is it any wonder that people abandon them ? 



So Jonathan made a covenant 'with the 
house of David (/ Sam, 20 : 16). 

TJOW large a figure such promises cut in 
* * human life. Civilization could not go 
forward without them. They enter into all 
human relationships. The child promises the 
parent that it ' ' will be good. ' ' Lovers prom- 
ise each other to be faithful unto death. Men 
promise to pay debts and to deliver goods. 
Governments promise each other to maintain 
peace or to unite in war. Without a high 
sense of their obligations, business would go 
to pieces, and society disintegrate. There is 
little to hope for in the life of a boy or girl 
who will not keep their word. Your word of 
honor ought to be as sacred as a most solemn 
oath. It must be as good as a witnessed bond. 
Bad promises are better broken than kept ; but 
good ones must be fulfilled at the cost of prop- 
erty and life. Who doubts that either one 
4 



of those magnificent young Jews would rather 
have died than broken that covenant ! 



cAccording as each hath recefbed 
a gift (/ Pet. 4 : 10). 

'"THANK God for that word "according" ! 
* There is one thing that human nature 
never does, which the divine nature never 
fails to do, — and that is, to preserve true 
ratios. God suits the back to the burden, and 
the burden to the back. From him to whom 
much hath been given, much shall be required; 
from him who hath little, little. God never 
demands a ten-talent dividend from a one- 
talent man. On that wisdom and justice I 
pillow my head and heart. But the exaction 
will be ' ' according to the gift ; ' ' and oh, 
when we see ourselves as God sees us, how 
pitiful, how contemptible, shall we seem ! 



For I kriofo my transgressions ; and my 
sin is ever before me (Psa. 51 : 3). 

|MO MORTAL man can endure the per- 
manent consciousness of a great sin 
without either penitence, moral ruin, or men- 
tal collapse. It is a fearful dilemma. I be- 
lieve in teaching children to look their sins in 
5 



the face. Harrow their consciences. Make 
them realize their guilt. If you smooth over 
their vices and extenuate their faults you ruin 
them. There is hope for Little Bill if he looks 
pale in the face and black around the eyes 
until he confesses the He he has told. If he 
cannot shake off the memory of it, if it pur- 
sues him like a shadow, if it is ever before 
him, night and day, thank God and take cour- 
age. He will come out all right. It is the 
boys who can kill birds and not dream about 
them nights that I despair of. It was the tor- 
ment of an irrepressible vision of his guilt that 
drove David at last to penitence. 



Encourage the fainthearted (/ Thess. 5 : 14), 

I'VE had my share of life's pleasures, and 
* want to testify as to which is the sweetest 
of them all. It's "putting heart" into people 
who have lost it. The saddest sight that 
Nature holds up to God is a boy or girl who 
has "lost heart." Poor, dispirited, hopeless 
little folks ! What can any one do without 
"heart"? Not to be able to put your 
1 ' heart ' ' into a task is to be certain of failure. 
It is almost as fatal to be only "half-hearted." 
But how terrible to lose heart entirely 1 And 
yet in every group of children you are liable 
- 6 



to find some timid, shrinking creature who has 
already lost the "courage of life." How 
beautiful it is to " hearten him up, " — to breath e 
hope into his empty spirit ! And how easy it 
is — often. Sometimes a single kind word will 
do it, sometimes even a smile of encourage- 
ment. You can do a thousand times as much 
for child or man by putting heart into his 
bosom as you can by putting either learning 
into his head or money into his pockets. 



Having therefore obtained the help 
thai is from God (Acts 26 : 22). 

HTHE help that is from God. There are 
many kinds of help, — the help of money, 
the help of friendship, the help of health, the 
help of knowledge, the help of experience. 
But there is also the help that is from God. 
It is a very peculiar and wonderful help in- 
deed. It is a help that people do not believe 
in until they are in extremity. They want to 
help themselves, or have some human being 
help them, until all else has failed. And then 
they cast themselves on God. No little boy 
ever believed that the water in the old mill- 
pond would hold him up until it actually did 
so. He will grab at a board, or a compan- 
ion's leg, or at a straw for support, but never 
7 



lay himself out flat on his back on the bosom 
of the water. The little skeptic ! I have been 
trying for two years to teach Little Bill that 
the water is anxious to ' ' help ' ' him to swim, 
and he is still positively convinced that it is 
trying to drown him. It is only after men 
have cast themselves, in some deep despera- 
tion, into the "everlasting arms," that they 
discover their helping and holding power. 
They are the only safe refuge for the sufferer 
and the sinner. 

cMinistering as of the strength fohich 
God supplieth (/ Pet 4 : //). 

TT IS both bad morals and puerile philoso- 
phy to forget that strength and wisdom 
and virtue, and life itself, proceed from God. 
Do you think it does no harm to the son 
of a millionaire to spend his father's fortune 
as if it were his very own, and he had earned 
it with his hands ? It generates egotism. It 
fosters pride. It darkens the intellect. It 
degrades the conscience. You never saw the - 
son of a rich man who forgot that he was using 
the money that his father supplied, who was 
not either a fool or a knave. You never saw, 
and you never will see, men who forget that 
God supplies their strength, their wisdom, 
their virtue, and their life, who are not in 
3 



some way mentally or morally unsound. The 
sea must not forget the rivers, nor the rivers 
the clouds. The fruits must not forget the 
seed, nor the seed the flower. Man, thou art 
nothing but a derivative ! Make the best 
of it! 

A 

Thanks he to God, who gvoeth us the Wdoiy 
through our Lord Jesus Christ ( / Cor, 15 : 57), 

" WICTORY ! " That is the battle-cry of 
" our holy religion. "Victory" over 
sorrow, over sin, over death, through our Lord 
Jesus Christ. Happiness (in the long run) 
will return from the battle with sorrow chained 
to the axle of its chariot ; righteousness, with 
sin ; life, with death. Therefore smile at de- 
feat, yes, laugh at disaster, exult at death. If 
death grins at life in the autumn, life laughs at 
death in the spring. The grave grinned hid- 
eously at life when they laid the dead Saviour 
in its cold embrace. But after three days life 
laughed, for the victor tore himself from its 
arms. Yes, he has brought life and immortal- 
ity to light. We see it now. It is life, not 
death, that rules the universe. This is the 
supreme power. Its final triumph is assured. 
Victory is written on its banners. The contest 
for supremacy is long and terrible, but the 
issue is certain. Listen to Victor Hugo : 
9 



"When I go down to the grave, I can say, 
like so many others, 'I have finished my day's 
work, ' but I cannot say, ' I have finished my 
life. ' My work will begin again next morning. 
My tomb is not a blind alley, it is a thorough- 
fare ; it closes with the twilight to open with 
the dawn. It would not be worth while to 
live at all, were we to die entirely. That 
which alleviates labor and sanctifies toil is to 
have constantly before us the vision of a better 
world appearing through the darkness of this 
life. ' ' Isn' t that the cry of victory ? 



The times of ignorance ♦ . . God overlooked; but 
now he commandeth men thai they should 
all everywhere repent {Acts 17 : 30). 

HTHERE is no greater difference between 
A any two other things in life than "then" 
and ' ' now. ' ' The responsibilities of yester- 
day cannot measure those of to-day. ' ' Then ' ■ 
the opportunities, the knowledge, the power, 
was so much less than "now." Yesterday 
you were a child, to-day you are a youth ; 
yesterday you were a youth, to-day you are a 
man. "Then" we could excuse, and even 
wink at, your carelessness and irresponsibility; 
1 ' now ' ■ we shake our heads, and frown and 
condemn. Last Sunday I found a half-grown 
io 



youngster hiding in the hallway after Sunday- 
school had begun. ' * What' s the matter ? ' ■ 
I asked. " I've got on my first long pants, 
and I don't dare go in," he replied. He 
had passed an epoch. He'll never be a 
knickerbocker boy again. He is a long-pants 
boy now, and will be so forevermore. Father, 
mother, brother, sister, teacher, friends, will 
expect and demand more of him than before. 
His knickerbocker peccadillos will no longer 
be " overlooked " or " winked at." Life was 
one thing then, it's another thing now. There 
is the same difference between a boy fn knick- 
erbockers and long pants as between a bird in 
a nest with a mother brooding over it and in 
a meadow with a hawk hovering above it. 



If he commit iniquity, I %& chasten him 
'with the rod of men (2 Sam, 7 : 14). 

TJUMANITY has not yet outgrown the rod. 
11 i ( w^om the Lord loveth he chasteneth. ' ' 
Every rational human being instinctively de- 
spises a professed moral system in which ini- 
quity is not followed by the lash. Thieves 
would not dare to live in communities where 
theft went unpunished. What could hinder 
them from being stolen from ? Ah ! It always 
seems so strange to me that these sentimental 
ii 



parents who shrink from inflicting pain on dis- 
obedient and wayward children are not afraid 
of being despised for their weakness (as they 
are morally certain to be) by the young repro- 
bates whom they weakly spare. When Little 
Bill faces his father (hair-brush in hand), he 
has such a feeling of awe as when Moses saw 
God in the burning bush. He beholds the 
whole moral government incarnate in that 
single human personality. Do you mean to 
tell me he does not respect and love it ? 



c Da. e vid inquired of Jehovah {2 Sam. 2:1)* 

\ \ THAT makes us do what we do ? Some- 
' * times it is sheer, blind impulse. We 
do not stop to question or debate. How 
would you like to be constituted so that you 
could do so always, and never have to regret 
it? Wouldn't that turn life into a holiday! 
It is coming to forks in the road, and having 
to choose through investigation and reflection, 
that makes existence a tragedy. The instant 
we stop to "inquire" we suffer. Profound 
mysteries and uncertainties confront us. Of 
whom shall we ask the way ? By what method 
shall we conduct the search ? Sometimes peo- 
ple have consulted the leaves on the floors of 
caves, or the entrails of sacrificial animals, or 

12 



the flight of birds, or the position of the stars, 
or the grounds in their teacups. Dunces ! 
But " David inquired of Jehovah." Strange 
as it may seem, there is no way so sure to find 
the pathway of life as to make a silence in the 
heart and consult the divine Oracle who dwells 
there. Other guides assist us, — history, 
science, experience, friends. But often, when 
all else has failed, we find that strange way of 
inquiring directly of Jehovah, and out of the 
unknown he speaks. Nothing is so wonder- 
ful as this. A flash of light breaks up out of 
unilluminated darkness. Vague feelings in- 
stantly crystallize into clear convictions. A wis- 
dom deeper than our own utters an augury or 
pronounces a decree, and we feel that it is 
ex cathedra. It is the voice, not of the soul 
itself, but of the God within the soul. And, 
after all, that is the true method of attaining 
wisdom. This is not to scorn or reject other 
methods. It is to supplement them by the 
final method. 

Go thy <way for this time (Acts 24t25). 

(~\F THIS present moment only are you 
^■^ sure. No man ever fully grasped that 
thought without being shaken by it. Now is 
the accepted time; now is the day of salva- 
tion. Nothing is more fatal than the habit of 

13 



procrastination. " Indulge in procrastination, 
and in time you will come to this, — that, be- 
cause a thing ought to be done, therefore you 
cannot do it." " Let's take the instant by 
the forward top, for we are old [some of us, 
alas ! or getting so], and on our quickest de- 
crees the inaudible and noiseless foot of Time 
steals ere we can effect them." And yet 
" there is, by God's grace, an immeasurable 
distance between late and too late." 



So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armor- 
bearer, and all his men, that same day 
together (/ Sam, 31 : 6), 

I F WE could only suffer alone ! If only 
these Sauls did not have to drag others 
into ruin with them ! But who ever heard of 
a man who fell, as an apple falls from a tree, 
alone ? Our lives are indissolubly linked with 
other lives. When we drop, we pull them 
with us. Sometimes we pull them into sor- 
row only. But what sorrow ! Do you think 
a boy can be discharged by his employer, or 
disgraced in his school, or sentenced to the 
penitentiary, and not involve his parents and 
his friends in his pain ? And sometimes we 
drag them into our sins. How few sins we 
commit alone ! Almost every one of them 
14 



requires a confederate. These sinful Sauls 
must have their armor-bearers, and down goes 
the whole company with the leader. "Saul 
died, and his three sons, and his armorbearer, 
and all his men. ' • 

Ye once 'walked according to the course 
of this <o>orld {Eph. 2 : 2). 

AX7HICH, by the way, is the gait of most of 
* * the people you meet. They set their 
pace to that of the procession in which they 
are walking, and it is "according to the course 
of this world. ' ' They do not seem to realize 
that there is any other world or any other 
pace. The children who are reared down in 
the Alleghany mountain valleys do not know 
that people anywhere move at a different pace 
from that of the mountaineers around them. 
The little pickaninnies down in the "Black 
Belt" do not dream that there is any other gait 
than that of the trifling people who are the only 
ones they have ever seen. Put them down in 
New York or Chicago, and the streets look 
like a race-course, and all the people seem on 
a run. Well, there's another "world" than 
this we live in. Its inhabitants walk in a 
swifter, nobler "course." What you need to 
do, my little man, is to catch their gait. It's 
too hot a pace for loafers and sinners. You 
15 



must lay off every weight and the sin that doth 
so easily beset you, and run with a sublime 
patience the race that is set before you, if you 
keep the gait of goal-winners like Paul. 



Icheerfutly make my defence {Acts 24 : 10), 

TT IS a first-class law of life never to be put 
on the defensive, — if you can possibly 
help it. Be aggressive, attack the enemy, do 
not be driven into a corner. When his pupil 
complained to the old fencing-master that his 
sword was too short to enable him to make an 
attack, he said, ' ' Take a step forward ! take 
a step forward ! " And yet there are times in 
every man's life when he has to explain his 
conduct. Circumstances conspire to put him 
in a bad light, as they did Paul. But how few 
people there are, comparatively, who can 
' * cheerfully ' ' make their defense ! We have not 
said or done all that we are charged with, but 
a little word or a trivial deed has compromised 
us. We are embarrassed, we are confused, we 
suffer torture. It is torture ! What sensations 
those must be that a politician has to suffer 
when his enemies get hot upon the trail of 
some indiscretion or sin ! Many a man has 
been held back from accepting a nomination 
or an office by that shudder that follows his 
16 



remembrance of a still undiscovered crime. 
" Suppose they should digit up," he says, and 
the cold sweat starts on his forehead. Be sure 
of this : it is only the honest man who can make 
his defense "cheerfully." If, like the great 
Apostle, he has a conscience void of offense 
toward God and man, he can look his defam- 
ers and persecutors in the face with a tranquil 
courage. 

A 

The sacrifices of God are a 
broken spirit (Psa. 51 : 17)* 

'"THERE are broken spirits and broken 
* spirits. Do not misunderstand God. 
It is not a soul emptied of all hope and pur- 
pose, willing to be trampled under foot by 
every trouble and thwarted by every obstacle 
of life, that God loves. Like your heart, and 
mine, the heart of the Infinite One thrills at 
indomitable courage, at a spirit that the com- 
bined misfortunes of all time cannot make 
quail. If God can despise any one, it is the 
man who surrenders, and grovels and whines 
before the adversities of life. But there is a 
second kind of broken spirit. The world 
despises it as much as the first. Nothing can 
make this stupid world see the difference ; 
but nothing can blind God to it. There is 
no other moment in its whole existence when 
17 



a human soul is so beautiful and so lovable 
as in the moment of contrition. There are 
hearts on earth that can harden themselves 
against penitence and contrition, but there 
are none in heaven. Dives in tears, the tears 
of penitence, would have found as warm a 
welcome among the angels as Lazarus appear- 
ing in the bosom of Abraham. The key to 
Paradise is a tear. But it is a tear of peni- 
tence, not weakness. 



When I have a convenient season, 
I frill call thee unto me (Acts 24 : 25). 

T^VID you ever find a really convenient sea- 
**-^ son for doing a disagreeable task? I 
have hunted for such seasons, but in vain. 
There are almost horribly convenient seasons 
for doing all sorts of meannesses. There 
seem to me to be always about two thousand 
agreeable and easy moments in every hour for 
acts of genuine devilment on my part. But 
one has to hunt through about two years to 
find one single second in which it seems as if 
all nature had conspired to make it easy and 
pleasant to confess a sin or right a wrong. 
Other things come, but convenient seasons for 
penitence — never ! This present instant is 
the best one that ever will arrive. 
. 18 



^But abide thou m the things which 
thou hast learned (2 Tim. 3 : 14). 

'T'HE thoughts that we receive from noble 
* men and women ought to become a 
habitation for our souls. As a matter of fact, 
every man's ideas are a more real dwelling- 
place than his own home. I consciously 
retire into mine a thousand times a day. 
Sometimes I go into this structure of thoughts 
(that I have woven as a bird does its nest) 
for quiet, sometimes for consolation, and 
sometimes to shut the gates and make a fight, 
like an old baron in his castle. There are 
temptations to leave the old abode, of course. 
There is a wild impulse in every heart to run 
away from home at times. We get tired of 
seeing the same old furniture, and the stupid 
patterns on the wall. We see other houses 
finer than our own. It is so with our thought- 
houses. They seem weak, inadequate, and 
dreary. We sigh for other and looser and 
more dazzling ideas of existence. But "stay, 
stay at home, my heart, and rest: home-keeping 
hearts are happiest. ' ' Only we must let our 
houses grow with our growth, like a snail's or 
an oyster's. Do not build them too rigid and 
inflexible, or they will burst. Say what you 
will, nothing is better about our thought- 
houses than the ' ' assurance that comes from 
knowing of whom we have received them." 
19 



Thoughts that sheltered Jesus Christ, Paul, 
Martin Luther, and my parents, are good 
enough for me. 

behold, I tell you a. mystery (/ Cor. 15 : 51). 

I TNDOUBTEDLY the resurrection of the 
^ body and the immortality of the soul 
are "mysteries." And, because they are, 
thoughtless people reject them. Now, if this 
is a good reason, let us reject everything. 
For, at last, everything is an insoluble mys- 
tery. When we want to express our idea of 
the absolute simplicity of an idea, we say, 
"It is as plain as two sticks." But nothing 
can be more mysterious than those very sticks. 
Once they were living trees, and you can no 
more understand what that life was than you 
can understand infinity and eternity. Mystery 
hovers over all things here below. All are 
shrouded in a veil. " Every grain of sand is 
a mystery; so is every daisy in summer, and so 
is every snowflake in winter. But upwards 
and downwards and all around us science and 
speculation pass into mystery at last. ' ' The 
presence of mystery is no ground for unbelief, 
it is rather a reason for faith. The common- 
est facts and laws of nature, the daily provi- 
dences of life, are as full of incomprehensible- 
ness as the deepest doctrines of religion. A 
20 



religion without mystery would be as repugnant 
as a seed without life or a body without a soul. 
There is no religion without mystery. God 
himself is the great secret of nature. To me 
the beating of my heart, the expansion and 
contraction of my lungs, the ceaseless flow of 
thought in my brain, are as staggering as the 
resurrection of my body after death. It is 
these very mysteries that are the fuel of faith. 



ShQyw therefore let your hands be strong, 
and be ye Valiant; for Saul your 
lord is dead (2 Sam* 2 : 7). 

T^HERE seems to be a "therefore" to 
everything. How tired we grow of these 
" therefores ' ' ! How imperative and implaca- 
ble they are ! "Saul is dead, a new king is 
on the throne, and ' therefore ' you must be 
strong and valiant." You are rich, and 
"therefore" you must be benevolent. You 
are poor, and "therefore" you must be 
economical. You are a master, and ' ' there- 
fore ' ' you must be considerate. You are a 
servant, and "therefore" you must be faith- 
ful. You are a teacher, and "therefore " you 
must be held accountable. You are a pupil, and 
"therefore " you must be respectful. " Every 
why hath a wherefore," and every circum- 

21 



stance a "therefore." New duties are in- 
volved in new situations, just as plants are 
involved in seeds, and seeds in flowers. Little 
Bill, yesterday you were in kilts, and "there- 
fore ' ' you had a right to play from morning 
till night. To-day you are in knickerbockers, 
and " therefore " you must go to school and 
study. To-morrow you will be in trousers, 
and "therefore" must begin to be a man, 
and bear "the white man's burden." The 
whole moral system lies in that word ' ' there- 
fore. ' ' The possession of power, or virtue, or 
knowledge, involves responsibility in its use. 
You can no more sever the latter from the 
former than you can detach a quality from a 
substance. 

Slight become such as I am, 
except these bonds (Acts 26 : 29), 

TT TAKES a profound conviction that one is 
* right to sustain one in that wish. Could 
you wish that your dear friends were such as 
you are ? Are your convictions and ideas and 
faiths so sweet and satisfying that you could 
say, as Paul did, "I wish that you might be- 
come such as I am" ? If not, of course you 
have no power in the advocacy of your phi- 
losophy of life. Get right with yourself, get 
right with your fellow-men, get right with God, 

22 



get a clear conscience, get a happy heart, and 
then you will also get persuasive power. A 
captain who knows that his boat leaks, puts up 
a weak-kneed plea for passengers. It is not 
an easy thing for a father to urge his boys to 
be such as he is, if he chews tobacco and 
drinks beer. 

Render to all their dues {Rom. 13:7). 

DERHAPS no man ever yet realized the 
• extent of his obligations. Your obliga- 
tions are not limited by your appreciation of 
them. They are limited only by your powers 
to do good. It is the duty of every tallow 
dip and of every electric light to throw its 
beams as far as it can. We know all about 
the obligations others owe to us. How exact- 
ing we are of those courtesies and duties ! 
pitifully and contemptibly so, I think. How 
little our Saviour had to say about our 
"rights," and how much about our " obliga- 
tions." He did not demand his "pound 
of flesh ' ' from his creditors, but gave his 
whole body to his debtors. However much 
one may sympathize with the wage-earners in 
their clamorous demands for their "rights," 
it makes him sick at heart to hear so little 
from their lips about their "duties." Chris- 
tianity is a steady and determined will to give 
2 3 



to others what belongs to them, not to exact 
from them what belongs to us. Good neigh- 
borliness does not consist in the determination 
to keep your neighbor's hens out of your 
garden, but to keep yours out of his. Duties 
are reciprocal, — oh, yes ! But we have no 
need of a gospel to teach us to exact our ob- 
ligations, but only to fulfil them! 



cA.ga.inst thee, thee only, have 
I sinned {Psa. 51 : 4). 

T DO not myself know just what sin is against 
God — alone. All the sins that I know, 
besides being against God, are also against 
some other person or our own selves. But it 
is easy to understand how, in some impas- 
sioned moment of clarified vision, all con- 
sciousness of any other wrong is swallowed up 
in that of wrong against God. Mark you, 
though, that it takes moral natures of the 
highest order to attain this knowledge, the 
products of the most thorough spiritual 
education. What insight, imagination, illumi- 
nation, are required to trace the effect of our 
sins on the heart of God! It is like being told 
that the waves from a pebble break on the 
farthest shore of ocean. Both waves and sins 
seem dissipated and lost before reaching their 
24 



destination. And yet, as every telephone 
message passes through the central station, 
every evil deed and word and thought passes 
through the heart of God. Every wire runs 
into his bosom. Little Bill, you are listening 
to me incredulously. You do not see how 
your evil deeds can sadden the heart of God. 
Well, you did not see how they could sadden 
mine until you saw me break down and weep, 
the other day. Why should I care what you 
do? Why should a pang shoot through my 
heart ? I do not know, but it does. And it 
is no more wonderful that this pain strikes 
through the heart of your other Father. 



Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of 
God, . . . And God smote him there 
for his error (2 Sam. 6 : 6,7). 

T^HERE is a skeptical distrust of God's abil- 
ity to carry his church over the rough 
places in the journey that results in immeasur- 
able harm j for, in trying to keep it from fall- 
ing by the way, men stretch forth their hands 
to deeds of actual impiety. In this present 
period many a good man, troubled and scared 
by the prospect of the church's overthrow, has 
tried to prop it up with sensational preaching, 
or questionable methods of business, or alien 
25 



institutions. All such things are extraneous. 
They become a hindrance and drag to the 
progress of the kingdom. There is a sense in 
which the church of Christ cannot prosper 
without the support of the hand of every child 
of God, but there is also a sense in which it 
will go forward on its way as surely as the 
revolving earth itself, — which we ride on, and 
cannot sustain by lifting nor hasten by push- 
ing. Perhaps a good motto for the church of 
this age would be, "Impious Uzzahs, hands 
off!" 

A 

Inquired foho he <was, and %hai 
he had done {Acts 21 : 3S). 

COONER or later we shall all of us have to 
*^ answer that twofold question, "Who are 
you, and what have you done ? M What have 
you done ? This is what the world insists on 
knowing. It is not enough that you are some- 
thing, you must do something. Society wants 
the man who has sung a song, or written a 
book, or explored a country, or organized a 
crusade, or who can do it. In the business 
world or in politics it is just the same. What 
work have you done ? What word have you 
uttered ? The world needs work done. It 
judges men, not by their profession, but by 
their accomplishment. And a great thing it is 
26 



to have done something, — won a battle, built 
a bridge, organized a Sunday-school, cleared 
a farm, dug a well or even a ditch. How can 
any one bear to think of dying without having 
made his mark on the earth somewhere, — 
having, as it were, written his autograph in 
nature's album in some task that can never be 
erased ? Then comes the other question, 
" Who are you ? " A thousandfold more im- 
portant in God's sight than the other one, for 
he "looks not upon the outward appearance, 
but on the heart." Many a man that has 
done the greatest deeds in history has no more 
value in the eyes of God than a puff of smoke, 
while many a quiet, gentle soul, that has 
patiently spent its life in bed, is cherished in 
the heart of the Eternal as a saint. 



For Jehovah *h>itt not forsake his 
oeople (/ Sam, 12 : 22), 

]M OT so long as there is a single purpose in 
the heart of man for him to hold on to! 
I think, myself, that the grip of God on the 
human soul is like the grip of gravity on mat- 
ter, — not an atom of which ever gets away. It 
is ground to imponderable powder j burnt into 
impalpable smoke j melted into invisible 
vapor ; it is tossed about and hidden and 
?7 



transformed ; but it never gets away from the 
grip of gravity. Samuel seemed to feel that 
way about the souls of men, and I do top. 
God will never forsake them. So don't get 
discouraged and let go your hold of him who 
never lets go his hold of you ! Neither do 
your true friends ever forsake you. You for- 
sake them, — that is the trouble. You may 
not believe it, but there are more people in 
the world like this good old Samuel than you 
know anything about. 



& 



*But lighting upon a place where t e o>o 
seas met, they ran the vessel 
aground {Acts 27 : 41). 

T^HIS is what the doctors call " heroic treat- 
ment." But nobody can deny that, in 
many of life's most significant ventures, the 
only way to save the crew is to scuttle the ship 
or run it on to the shore. Many a man is be- 
ing dragged down to financial ruin by a bad 
business location which he hasn't the courage 
to desert. Perhaps the waters of a river run 
into his cellar j perhaps the business center of 
the city has moved. He hangs on and on, in 
hope of changes that never come, and finally 
goes down under the ruin. He had better 
have run his vessel aground, and begun life 
38 



over again. Perhaps he has engaged in a 
business whose immorality he did not perceive 
at first, — as so many get into saloon-keeping 
or distilling when they are young and ignorant. 
At last his conscience has been enlightened, 
and he clearly perceives that his business will 
wreck him morally. But the question of bread 
and butter for his family paralyzes him when 
he tries to forsake it. He holds on and holds 
on, day after day, year after year, until he has 
grown hardened or discouraged, and the good 
dies out of his soul. How much better it 
would have been to have run the vessel 
aground in the place where those two seas 
of good and evil met ! It's a last resort, a 
desperate remedy, but it's often the only one. 
So slip your cable, unship your helm, run your 
vessel on the rocks ; then go and cut down 
trees and build a better one. 



cAnd all <went to be taxed {Luke 2:3), 

CVERY living thing is taxed, and all willing 
^ workers overtaxed. The baby over- 
taxes its mother j the growing brood of chil- 
dren, the father ; his parish, the preacher ; 
his business, the merchant ; his patients, the 
doctor ; his land, the farmer. Well, that is all 
right. It is these high assessments that make 
29 



life worth while. You were never so much of 
a man as when you thought yourself overtaxed. 
We do our hardest pulling under the lash. It 
was better for Joseph to pay more taxes than 
he wanted to, and to a government that he 
did not like, than not to pay any at all. 



'Because of the hope of Israel I am bound 
"tinth this chain {Acts 28 : 20). 

EVERYBODY in this world is bound with a 
*^ chain. None are at perfect liberty. We 
envy the rich their independence. They seem 
to be able to move about the world with the free- 
dom of the birds, and to do whatever they take 
a notion to. Do not deceive yourselves. They 
too are bound with chains. Some earthly 
limitation is on them all. Their chains are a 
little longer than yours, perhaps, but they come 
to the ends of them all the same. Some of 
them are sick, some of them are sad, and some 
of them are silly, — with a chain bound round 
their brains, which is enough sight worse than 
a manacle on one's leg. No, no ! You are 
not the only one who bears about your ball 
and chain. I've got mine. But let me tell 
you this : It's one thing to be bound with 
chains for "the hope of Israel," or some other 
great and sacred cause. Fathers are bound 
3° 



with chains for the hone of their families, 
mothers for the hope of a little sick baby, 
ministers for their churches, patriots for their 
country. They are held down to their tasks 
like slaves. They cannot leave their little cell. 
But "the hope," "the hope," "the hope," 
sustains them day and night. It' s quite another 
thing to be bound with the chain of a vile 
companion or a vicious habit. On the prai- 
ries, the cowboys stake their horses to a post. 
It is not only to have them ready to mount in 
the morning, but to keep them from being 
stolen by Indians or eaten by wolves. You 
had better be thankful to God for "staking 
you out." 

A 

Jehdbah, the God of Israel, be 
Wtness (/ Sam. 20 : 12). 

TpHERE is nothing more overestimated than 
secrecy. How few deeds are ever done 
without a witness ! We do not know that we 
are observed, because our deeds are not im- 
portant enough to be commented on. But 
let any one of them, for some unexpected 
reason, be endowed with significance, and 
witnesses seem to spring out of the ground ! 
Walls have ears ; stones, eyes ! Vibrations 
seem to have been solidified in the air, 
footsteps petrified in drifting sands, ripples 
3i 



frozen on unstable water. Voices are heard 
on every hand, crying, " I saw you. I saw 
you ! " Do not presume on secrecy. Nature 
is as full of eyes as a peacock's tail. And be- 
sides, " There is an eye that never sleeps 
beneath the wing of night" "All things are 
naked and laid open before the eyes of him 
with whom we have to do." Jonathan was 
right. God is witness, — witness of your 
friendships, of your hatreds, of your jeal- 
ousies ; witness of your deeds and words and 
thoughts. Truer than the truth "I see my- 
self," is the truth "God sees me." 



Sa<w his face as it had been the 
face of an angel {Acts 6 : 15), 

A N UGLY statue or painting must be 
** always ugly, but there was never a living 
countenance so hideous that an inner light of 
love might not transfigure it. The homeliest 
are sometimes the most beautiful when a reli- 
gious light shines through the features like the 
flames of candles through cathedral windows. 
11 Her face is like the milky- way i' the sky, — 
a meeting of gentle lights without a name," 
said Sir John Suckling of one of his heroines. 
How many nameless gentle lights meet and 
glow in faces like Stephen's ! I have seen 
32 



lights beam in the faces of some I know that 
was not the molten matter of any sun, but 
a scintillation from the burning heart of God 
himself, — a light divine and inextinguishable. 



c4nd g&oe him fa t bor in the sight 
of the keeper {Gen. 39 : 2T). 

Y\ TE SOON enough find that there are cruel 
" and relentless forces working against us, 
throwing us into pits and prisons. What we 
need is to believe in the forces that are work- 
ing for us, giving us the kindness and favor of 
men, and the benefit of the powers of nature. 
When the wind blows your ship backward, 
do not think everything is against you. Re- 
member that the engine is for you, the rudder 
is for you, the buoyancy of the water is for 
you, and a thousand other things. While you 
are pegging away at your task (misunderstood, 
abused, despised), there is a good friend or 
two saying kind words behind your back. 
Some one is planning a "rise. " Did you 
ever stop to think of all the forces that were 
working "out of the sight" of such men as 
Washington and Lincoln to push them forward 
and upward? There are more for us than 
against us. And, at any rate, if the Lord be 
for us, who can (successfully) be against us ? 
33 



You and God can defy the universe. Be- 
lieve in the unseen *ood more than the un- 
seen evil. 

'Being moved e with jealousy (Acts 17 : 5). 

\X/E CALL the "feelings" of our souls 
** "emotions," because they move us. 
They are steam in the boilers of these human 
engines. They furnish driving power. Noth- 
ing is more certain than that emotions will 
move us — to something, to either good or 
bad. Beware, then, of jealousy. Do not 
flatter yourself that it will lie dormant in your 
heart. It is a fierce and terrible energy. It 
is like a keg of powder waiting for a spark. 
It will drive you to some dark and desperate 
deed, as it did those Jews. Jealousy is a fire; 
extinguish it. It is a snake ; scotch it. 



The Lord hath need of them [Matt. 21 : 3). 

I F WE could have two divinely inspired apos- 
tles appear to us and say, "The Lord 
hath need of this, and the Lord hath need of 
that, and the Lord hath need of the other," 
the most difficult element of duty-doing would 
vanish. There are not a few people in the 
world who find it much harder to know what 
34 



they ought to give up than to give up what 
they know they ought to. Life, however, 
must not be made too easy for us. We must 
learn by experience and insight to know 
what our Lord demands. Our fathers and 
mothers and teachers will not always live 
to tell us. And we must learn, also, that 
it is none the less true that the Lord hath 
need of many things that we possess, and 
can perform, when he does not appear to us 
himself, nor even send an apostle. God's 
needs are manifested through the needs of 
others. All real helplessness is a "sight 
draft" from the Lord upon every man to 
whom it is presented. 



His mother kept all these sayings 
in her heart {Luke 2: 51). 

'"THERE is as much difference between 
* keeping sacred words in the head and 
the heart as between hanging seed-corn in the 
kitchen and planting it in the ground, or be- 
tween keeping coal in the scuttle and putting 
it in the grate. You may keep the multiplica- 
tion-table in your head, but the Golden Rule 
must be cherished in the heart. When we 
commit things to memory, they may do us as 
little good as the documents do the tin box to 
35 



which we commit them in the safety deposit 
vaults. But the last words your father said to 
you, or the prattle from the lips of your little 
child, went straight to your heart, and there 
they abode and blessed you, coming up fresh, 
beautiful, and inspiring day after day and 
year after year. Isn't it a beautiful mystery? 
Oh, learn the divine art of committing sayings 
to your heart ! 

I 'will not lei thee go, except 
thou bless me {Gen. 32 : 26), 

T F WE should wrestle in that spirit with every 
incident and every accident, every person 
and every object, every angel and every devil, 
we meet in life, we would learn a wonderful 
secret, and it would be, that in each there is a 
sublime lesson and an eternal benediction. 
Try it ! You are now facing some great dis- 
aster. Grapple with it, analyze it, turn it in- 
side out, ransack its secret, hunt for its con- 
cealed meaning. Say to it, as you seize it by 
the throat, "If it takes me ten years, or for- 
ever, I will not let you go until I see the part 
you were sent to play in my life. ' ' You will 
find it. It will disclose itself at last. As surely 
as there is fire in every flint, there is blessing 
in every experience. There are some in which 
there are curses, and terrible ones at that. 

36 



But even those, if a man grapples them as 
Jacob did, may be made to yield some blessing. 



& 



Go, and do thou likewtse {Luke 10 1 37). 

T T IS very astonishing to know how many 
A people can admire a good deed without 
feeling any disposition to try and imitate it. 
There is always some reason why they could 
not possibly do it. It would be so much 
harder for them. " It did not cost the person 
who did it any effort, — don't you know?" 
For shame ! Good deeds do not come easy 
for any one. If you don't say to yourself, 
when you see a good deed, "I will do that 
myself when I get a chance," there is some- 
thing wrong with your machinery, and you had 
better have it repaired. 



He entered into a boat. • • • And he 
spake to them (Matt. 13 : 2, 3). 

A NY place was a good enough pulpit for Jesus 
** Christ. If there was a synagogue within 
reach, he went there. If not, he preached 
from the top of a hill, or a curbstone, or a 
fishing-boat. Men and boys and girls who are 
dead in earnest always find a weapon or an 
37 



instrument, and, if not, they make one. When 
Samson found himself without a sword, he 
snatched up the jawbone of an ass. A ram's 
horn was good enough for Joshua, and a lamp 
and pitcher for Gideon. "Give me a lever 
long enough, and a fulcrum strong enough, 
and I will move the world ! ' ' said the old 
philosopher. If a little friend of mine had 
been there, he would have said : " Get your 
own lever. Don't wait for some one else 
to find it. Any old thing will do, — if you are 
stout enough. Don't you know yet that it is 
not the gun, but the man behind it? '' Some 
one saw the sword of Scandenberg, and said, 
"That is not much of a sword," and one of 
the hero's old companions said, "You ought to 
have seen the arm that wielded it ! " Some 
sermons are better from a stump than others 
from a carved oak pulpit. 



Separate me Barnabas and Saul (Acts 13 : 2). 

OOONER or later every individual gets sifted 
^ out of the crowd. A man is a unit, not 
a part of a mass. An apple lies down at the 
bottom of a barrel, lost in the pile, but by and 
by its turn comes to be taken out and peeled 
and eaten, — all alone. A little boy at first 
cannot distinguish his own identity. He is 

38 



swallowed up in the unity of the family; then 
he is detached, and sent to school. Now he is 
a part of a throng of happy youngsters ; but 
suddenly he is wrenched out of these relation- 
ships, and stuck behind a counter, or into an 
elevator, or into a street-car, and at last he is 
an individual! And so the process of separation 
goes on. We are sifted, culled out, selected, 
set apart. It is serious business, this "tread- 
ing the wine-press of life" alone. But God 
has called us to our own work, and not to an- 
other's. All hail the day, then, when he comes 
and takes us, and says, "Stand here! Go 
there !" 

A 

Forasmuch as God hath showed thee 
all this, there is none so discreet 
and 'wise (Gen, 41 : 39), 

A S THERE is a beauty in character which 
God's originating spirit alone can account 
for, so there is a wisdom of the soul which can 
only be explained by his indwelling light. 
There is a knowledge, there is a wisdom, there 
is a discretion, which can be acquired by ex- 
perience and education. But the world has 
always insisted that there is another sort of in- 
sight which cannot. Humanity has traced it 
to "inspiration," to a sudden flash of light 
shot into the soul by the God of all truth. 
39 



At any rate, it is certain that the greatest 
scholars sometimes lack it, while it is often 
seen scintillating from the souls of the igno- 
rant ; and it is the verdict of all the past ages 
that "spiritual things" are "spiritually dis- 
cerned," and that " holy men " have spohen 
"as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 
If you wish to know bird lore, you dwell 
among the birds ; if that of animals, with ani- 
mals ; if that of children, with children ; if 
that of sages, with sages. That which is their 
essence penetrates you. And those who, wish- 
ing to know the mind of God, spend much 
time in his presence, are penetrated by his 
spirit and filled with his wisdom. 



Who ate and drank with him after he 
rose from the dead (Acts 10 : 41), 

\ ET us make an honest effort to bring this 
*" - * marvelous fact home to ourselves. There 
were men who ate and drank with Jesus Christ 
after he had risen from the grave. I once saw 
a man who had seen Napoleon Bonaparte. 
He was old and poor and ignorant, but when 
I looked into his eyes, and said to myself, 
"Those eyes have actually beheld the greatest 
genius of war the world has ever produced," 
I felt almost giddy, it made the life of that 
40 



prodigy seem so awfully real. It is the sense 
of reality that we need in thinking of Christ. 
There is a way of quietly bringing this fact 
" that men ate and drank with him " home to 
the heart, so as to almost stop its beating with 
wonder. It is not a myth. It is not a 
baseless legend. No, a thousand times no ! 
He lived, he loved, he died, he rose ! 



cAnd Jacob *went on his *a>ay, and the 
angels of God met him (Gen. 32 : /)♦ 

OOMETHING like that will happen to every 
*** man who goes on his own way, — not on 
the path marked out for Napoleon or Wash- 
ington, but for him, plain John Smith. Not 
on the way chosen by himself against the will 
of God, but chosen by God's will for him, — 
the strait, narrow, individual path to the goal 
of his own personal life. Yes, on that path 
God's good angels will meet him ! There he 
will encounter the angels of his household, — 
his wife and little children. There he will find 
his true friends. There he will meet his joys 
and his sorrows, his failures and his triumphs, 
his losses and his gains. There he will catch 
more than passing glimpses of the divine pres- 
ence that hovers about him always. Nothing 
is so sweet, nothing so satisfying, as to be in 

4* 



the "way" your feet were made to travel 
Do not leave it for an instant. 



A 



/ send you forth as lambs in the 
midst of wolves {Luke 10 : 3), 

T^HERE may be more kinds of animals in 
* the human race than just lambs and 
wolves ; but these two varieties predomi- 
nate. I think it is probably right to try to 
be something else, but, if you are shut up 
to the choice, be a lamb every time. Be 
bitten rather than bite. Oh ! I know quite 
well that is not the kind of advice you will 
hear in "Wall Street," but I stick to it. 
Die rather than wrong or rob any one. 
Patience, gentleness, love, — these are the 
powers that will save the world. The lambs 
will "win out " in the long run. I am one of 
those who think that sometimes the wolves 
have to be hung up by the heels. I rather 
think that it may be all right to offer a reward 
for their scalps. Saloon-keepers must be 
brought up with a sharp turn. Robbers must 
be shut up in the "pen." Murderers must 
be electrocuted. But, after all, it is the lamb, 
and not the lion, who is to win in the fight 
against the wolves. It is more often by being 
eaten than by eating that we bring men to 
4* 



their senses. We must suffer injustice, if we 
want to help save the world. It is " heaping 
coals of fire on heads" that restores brains to 
reason. Kill men with kindness. It was the 
unresisting submission of Jesus that at last 
broke the heart of humanity. 



blessed are the pure in heart {Matt* 4 : 8), 

COME things can be seen through the brain, 
^ but others only through the heart. Sup- 
pose you had no heart. Do you think you 
could see your mother ? Do you think you 
see her with the same faculty with which you 
see the multiplication-table or the rule for 
cube root ? I do not. If you should come 
home from school some day with your temper 
all roused, and your heart so full of mad that 
you could scarcely speak, you would not see 
your mother at all. You might look at her, 
but you would not really behold her. You 
could not even see the baby. The little thing 
that crawls up to you, and that you feel like 
slapping, would not really be the baby. It 
would be something else. The real baby would 
be invisible to you until you got over being 
mad. That is why we say, "I was so mad I 
could not see." Something really blinds the 
43 



eye of the soul. When the anger all runs out 
of your heart, then you can see again, just as 
when the frost melts from the window-pane. 
No man ever saw God when he was mad. 
No man ever saw God when his heart was 
full of vanity, or envy, or impurity. He sees 
something vast, awful, ugly, and repellent, 
but it is not God. 



c4nd he dreamed, and behold, 
a ladder {Gen. 28 : 12). 

1VTOTHING could be more true or more 
beautiful. Just as every road in the 
Roman Empire led to Rome, every line erected 
on earth runs straight to heaven. Any sun- 
beam, followed to the end, will lead us to its 
effulgent source. Just as any little Roman lad 
could step out of his door and strike the high- 
way with absolute certainty of reaching the 
palace of the Caesar ; just as his eye may travel 
on the sunbeam from his own bright eye to the 
sun, he can find the foot of a ladder on the 
spot where he stands that will lead him straight 
to heaven and God. You do not have to go 
to Jerusalem or Mecca or Rome to find the 
first round of it. Try it now. Be very still a 
moment. Close your eyes in order to con- 
centrate your thought. Now lift that thought 
44 



to God. Straight as the sunbeam's track, 
swift as its flight, you are in the divine pres- 
ence. God has a telephone in the heart of 
every one, and you need not call a central 
office to reach him. How like the angels go- 
ing back and forth are our thoughts and his ! 



Every tree therefore that bringeth 
not forth good fruit {Luke 3:9), 

TTHAT is a solemn and momentous hour 
* when this conception of life bursts into 
the sluggish, selfish soul of a man. To every 
earnest man it comes. He hears a voice say- 
ing to him : " The hour has struck when thou 
must stand forth and show what is in thee. 
Reveal thyself. Thou canst no longer skulk in 
the rear. Draw thy sword ! Show thy hand ! 
Bear fruit ! If there is anything in thee, go 
forward and upward ; if not, descend, retreat. 
Make place for better men. You have sat in 
that professor's chair, or stood in that pulpit, 
or edited that paper, or headed that party, 
long enough without getting anything done. 
Step down, laggard ! ' ' When these thoughts 
thundered in the soul of John, he left the 
desert for the haunts of men. This is the 
trumpet call we need. More men need to be 
aroused than comforted. 
45 



If ye then, being cfbil, knom> ho e a> to 
give good gifts (Matt* 7 : //). 

A LL the love and generosity and bountiful- 
** ness of a father's or a mother's heart 
comes from God as surely as all the luster and 
glory of a diamond or a dew-drop come from 
the sun. If they are kind, it is only because 
God is kind. If you trust them, that is the 
reason for trusting him who made them. But 
do not forget that love sometimes reveals itself 
by withholding as well as by bestowing. The 
eagle shows her love as much by not giving 
her young ones a fresh rabbit every hour or 
two as by giving it. Perhaps more ! Perhaps 
I would rather give my boy ten dollars than 
see him get down into a ditch and dig it out. 
But I should show my love more by letting 
him earn it for himself. 



He *h>as mdbed %>ith compassion (Lake 10 : 33), 

\17HAT kind of compassion is it which does 
* not move a man ? What kind of a 

mainspring would it be in a watch which did 
not move the hands? What kind of steam 
would it be in a boiler which did not move 
the piston-rods ? All the great emotions of 
the soul are "motor powers." But in some 
souls these emotions are about like a little 

4 6 



trickle of sap running out of a maple-tree try- 
ing to turn the water-wheel of a great big mill. 
You say you feel compassion? Well, why 
doesn't it drive your feet and hands? Feet, 
hands, heart, head, — everything, ought to 
commence to jump and whir (just as things do 
when the motorman turns on the current), if 
the compassion is genuine. Compassion is a 
motor power or nothing. Don't ever say you 
are a kind man unless your kindness moves you. 



What God hath cleansed, make not 
thou common (Acts 11 : 9). 

IT ERE lies one of those holy mysteries of 
A * the spiritual world, which I, for one, 
approach with the same wonder and reverence 
as the blooming of a century-plant, the break- 
ing of the egg-shells when the birds come forth 
into life, the birth of a little child. The in- 
stant that a man obeys a divine command, that 
moment the duty ceases to be irksome. What 
a transforming touch hath this sublime virtue, 
obedience ! The dark and sombre tasks of life 
are flooded with light ; the arduous and repul- 
sive ones are made easy and sweet ; drudgery 
becomes beatitude, the common becomes both 
clean and holy, by a divine magic. I wish I 
could cram into a single word my profound 
47 



conviction that the most common things of life 
are the most sacred. The tasks we most in- 
dignantly spurn, — these possess, in a superla- 
tive degree, that holy, blessed element. Dirt 
is as sacred as sunlight, — is it not? In what 
respect does the digging of a sewer, to drain 
off the poisons which threaten human life, fall 
so far below, in dignity and sublimity, the 
writing of a book or painting of a picture ? 
The "commonness" is in the mind that 
scorns. 

& 

Thou shatt not kitl {Exod. 20 : 13). 

CVERY moral obligation rests back finally 
' upon the principle that life is sacred. All 
life has a certain celestial character, and never 
ought to be taken without some great and good 
reason. The lowest forms are the least sacred, 
the highest the most sacred. Even the life of 
a weed, of a mosquito, of a snake, ought not 
to be taken without reason. The increasing 
sense of this sacredness is one of the great 
hopes of the modern world. Boys are getting 
more incapable of killing birds and squirrels 
than they used to be, thank God ! The most 
sacred thing in the world (because the noblest 
form of life) is a human being. To rob it of 
its life is the consummation of evil. And now 
listen to this : Murder is the logic of all vice. 

4 8 



If you do not wish to be a murderer, do not 
cherish any vice. Ambition, avarice, lust, 
jealousy, bitterness, — there is not one of them 
that has not led to innumerable murders. 
Give them full scope in your heart, and sooner 
or later you will find them hurling you in some 
uncontrollable passion against a fellow-creature. 
What a mysterious tendency ! Who can ex- 
plain that infernal gravitation of every vice 
toward murder ? Little Bill, if you don' t con- 
trol that temper, you (yes, you, dear, sweet 
little Bill ! ) may get so mad some day as to 
kill a man. 

A 

'Being sent forth by the Holy 
Spirit {Ads 13 : 4). 

THERE are times in the lives of men like 
Paul and Savonarola, like Moody and 
Lincoln, when the sense of being flung forth 
by the mighty hand of God upon their mission 
is like that of an arrow's feeling the thrust of 
the bow-string, or the cannon-ball the impact 
of the powder. When Livingstone plunged 
into the heart of the Dark Continent, he felt 
himself thus sent forth by the Holy Ghost ; 
and there isn't one of us, from the oldest man 
to the youngest child, that may not live so 
conscientiously, so earnestly, as to feel that 
Holy Spirit speeding us on our way. Just you 
49 



do to-day (to the last point of accuracy) ex- 
actly what you ought to do, and you will feel 
like a ship under full sail, — joyous, bounding, 
exultant. 

& 

Let me cast out the mote out 
of thine eye! {Matt. 7 : 4.) 

r\¥ COURSE, there have to be critics in 
^^^ human society, just as there have to be 
fly-papers and rat-traps in houses. But sharp- 
ening the eye to look abroad blunts it for look- 
ing at home. The " watch " on the masthead 
sees other vessels, but not his own. Do not 
be a critic unless you are called to it by some 
spiritual necessity, and even then you will 
need to pray twice as often and as hard as any 
other person in the world. 



What doth hinder me to be 
baptized? (Acts 8 : 36.) 

M OTHING ! There is no hindrance to the 
performance of duty, outside of one's 
own soul. Believe that. If a duty is impos- 
sible, it is not a duty. God never puts a man 
in a situation where he cannot fulfil the behests 
of his conscience. Trust him for always put- 
ting water within reach of the man who feels 
that he must be baptized. The hindrances to 
5o 



the divine life are always and only in the soul 
itself. Do not blame your dereliction in duty 
on other people or on Providence. What is it 
that hinders you from confessing Christ ? Your 
pride, your cowardice, your selfishness, — 
nothing else. Do not be deceived. Face the 
music. "If you are not satisfied with the 
face you see in the mirror, do not blame or 
break the glass." 

A 

cAnd Abram <wa.s very rich in cattle, in 
silver, and in gold (Gen, 13 : 2), 

LJE WAS rich in other and better things, or 
* * that would have been little to his credit 
or his profit. They are but the means, and 
not the end, of life ; the instruments, and not 
the objects. Of what value are they to the 
man who has not the noble purpose to use 
them for good, and the fine sensibilities to ap- 
preciate their true meaning? Of what use 
would it be to an engine to be rich in wheels 
and cranks and pistons, if it had no steam ? 
Of what use would it be to a ship to be rich in 
sails and masts and ropes, if it had no rudder ? 
The frightful danger in the accumulation of 
cattle and silver and gold is that the man will 
be swamped under them. "I want money 
for what it will buy," says one. "Do not 
imagine I am toiling and sacrificing merely 
5i 



for a big bank account. It is because, in my 
world, commercial supremacy is the measure 
of success, and I want to make my life a suc- 
cess," says another. That is all right, if you 
don' t lose sight of it. But the love of cattle and 
silver and gold themselves is a fearful under- 
tow that drags the soul out into the ocean of 
avarice and drowns it there. Beware of the 
undertow ! 

Ihe <word of God came unto John (Luke 3 : 2). 

A ND, it may be fearlessly asserted, it has 
** come to every man ! This is as certain as 
that air and water rush into vacant spaces, — for 
God is everywhere. The sea-shell may not be 
conscious of the continuous roar within it, nor 
the soul of the ceaselessly resounding voice ot 
God. Some people never hear the birds sing, 
but there are others who never miss a note, 
whether the fierce scream of the hawk or the 
gentle twitter of the sparrows. Mrs. Lordly 
behind the thick walls of her palace does not 
hear the merry whistle of little Jack Thimble- 
rigger, but his widowed mother in the vine- 
clad cottage catches the first faint note as he 
rounds the corner a block away. You may 
not hear the voice of God, but it is sounding in 
your ears as clearly as in those of Samuel or of 
John. 

5* 



Who can forgive sins but one, even 
God? {Mark 2. '7). 

]\TO ONE. They were right. Only he can 
* ^ forgive a sin against whom the sin has 
been committed. When Ben Brown's little 
friend accidentally killed Ben's bantam rooster, 
he was afraid to confess it, and so he went to 
Ted Somers, and asked him to forgive him. 
Ted said he would, and tried to, but some- 
how he couldn't. Of course. You might as 
well feed a chicken, and expect a kitten to 
get fat. Your father cannot forgive you for 
being saucy to your mother, and the grocer 
cannot forgive you for running away from 
school. If you have sinned against God, he 
can forgive you, and no one else can. The 
people were right. This was exactly what 
Jesus was always teaching. But he always 
asserted that he could forgive sins because he 
was God manifest in the flesh. 



They therefore that were scattered abroad <went 
about preaching the word (Acts 8:4), 

*"THE mothers must often push the birdlings 
A out of the nest in order to teach them to 
fly. In spite of the beauty and glory of the 
gospel, in spite of the natural impulse of the 
soul to communicate its joys and its discovery 
to other men, it is a fair question whether the 
53 



religion of Jesus would ever have gotten be- 
yond Palestine if it had not been for its perse- 
cutors. It is so easy to stay in the warm nest. 
But a cruel hand flung the birds far forth, and 
away they went singing. It is lack of an in- 
come that has scattered the younger sons of 
English noblemen over the earth. It is pov- 
erty that has scattered the peasants and lazza- 
roni of Europe broadcast over the New World. 
Persecution drove the Puritans and the Hugue- 
nots to America. "Let me stay here in the 
bin ! " cries the wheat to the farmer. " Not 
much ! ' ' cries the farmer to the wheat as he 
flings it into the furrow. Thank God our 
modern missionaries are going without being 
driven ! But how they are scattered ! — from 
China to Japan and Corea, from India to Cey- 
lon and Africa. We shall have a harvest that 
shall make the reapers shout some day. 



The Und that I <h?iU shofr thee {Gen. 12 : /). 

r\0 NOT be afraid that you cannot find 
*^ your place in the world ! It has been, 
or is now being, prepared for you. God will 
show it to you if you live simply, candidly, 
teachably, and go forward. Sometimes he 
shows it to your instinct. You know be- 
forehand what you ought to do and be, and 
54 



the minute you find your place it fits you. 
Sometimes you have to be jammed into it, 
because you won't go of your own accord ! 
Sometimes he shows it by accident, some- 
times by necessity ; but he shows it ! There 
will be ' 'signs." You will find the burden 
fitted for your back, the work cut out for your 
hand. Do not hold back. Do not miss the 
place assigned you. Do not try to fill an- 
other. Go to the spot on the sentry-beat, or 
the firing-line, or the sutler's camp, or wher- 
ever God shows you your place, and stand 
there like a man ! It is the only spot on 
earth where you can feel an absolute assurance 
and peace. 

A 

For behold, he prayeth {Acts 9 : //). 

A FTER all, that is the mood of spiritual 
receptivity. When the soul opens to 
emit its penitential sighs, the smallest aperture 
is wide enough for God's blessing to enter. 
It is the open furrow for the falling seed. 
More blessings worth the having and keeping 
have come to men in the attitude of prayer 
than in any other. I may not be able to tell 
you how to put your hard heart and stub- 
born soul into that state, but I can offer you 
the solemn assurance that when it is said of 
you in heaven, ' ' Behold, he prayeth, ' ' help 
55 



will be sent you on the instant, — not what help 
you sought, perhaps, but just the help you 
need. 

Was not our heart burning 
Whin us ? {Luke 24 : 32.) 

r^O WHEREVER anything makes your 
^^ heart ' ' burn ' ' like that. Join yourself to 
any person that kindles up those flames in 
your bosom. What these icy hearts of ours 
need is to be set on fire. Nothing will make 
them burn like contact with heroes and 
heroic deeds. Get close to Moses, Elijah, 
Paul, Savonarola, Luther, Lincoln, — above 
all, to Jesus Christ. He has made more 
hearts "burn" than all the rest together. 



c4t even, , , . and in the morning, . . . ye shall 
see the glory of Jehovah (Exod. 16 : 6, 7), 

Y/ES, and that glory is as visible to-day as 
*• then. If you do not see it in the dew 
that sparkles on the grass at daybreak, and in 
the clouds that glow with opalescent light when 
the sun goes down, you would not have seen 
it in the divided Jordan, the bitter waters 
sweetened by the tree, nor in the falling of 
the manna, and the quails. This glory is 

56 



always in the eye of the beholder. There is 
as much of the glory of God in the fish caught 
from a lake, or the kernel of grain raised in a 
field, or the loaf of bread baked in the oven, 
as in the miraculous food that fell from heaven. 
In every drop of water there is the majesty of 
an ocean, in every star the beauty of a uni- 
verse, in every child the grandeur of humanity. 
To the reverent mind the glory of God is seen 
as clearly in feeding a raven or clothing a lily 
as in satisfying the hunger or hiding the 
nakedness of an army. 



c Rfpentance and remission {Luke 24 : 47) 

'"THOSE three words contain a mystery and 
glory of which I, for one, never tire. 
The second follows the first by a sort of auto- 
matic movement. If you can get a mind to 
repent, remission follows just as sure as sound 
follows shooting a cannon, or light the striking 
of a flint and steel. Don't you bother about 
the remission — you just repent ! Just as 
you sow seed and let God bring forth the 
plant, you have only to hate your sin, and 
turn from it, and he will bestow the pardon. 
This beautiful mystery, this marvelous bit of 
spiritual mechanism, is what Christ came to 
disclose to us. Forgiving love is the essence 
57 



of God's nature. He can no more with- 
hold forgiveness to a penitent than a mother 
can withhold a kiss from the infant lips that 
are lifted to hers. To pardon is an irrepres- 
sible divine instinct. God pardons in the 
heavens as Christ pardoned on the cross. 



<And be thou a. blessing {Gen* 12 : 2). 

A BOUT three times a day, each one of us 
might profitably pause to ask, "Am I 
really a blessing to my friends ? ' ' Think of the 
millions who are positive curses to their loved 
ones ! And they are so often unconscious 
of it ! Some of us are neither one thing nor 
another. It doesn't make much difference 
whether we live or die. But now and then 
we find some one who is a positive and un- 
mitigated blessing ! Sometimes it is an obedi- 
ent little child ; sometimes a noble youth ; 
sometimes a great-hearted man or woman in 
middle life ; sometimes an old grandfather or 
grandmother. They radiate light and heat. 
They shed joy and peace. Every one is hap- 
pier and better the minute they appear. The 
canary sings more sweetly; the horse strikes 
a better gait ; the household affairs go more 
smoothly. Whatever else you are, or are not, 
try to be a blessing ! You can be this even 
58 



if you are poor, even if you are lame, even 
if you are blind. Nothing can prevent you 
from being a blessing but your own self ! 



*But in every nation he that feareth 
him, and <worketh righteousness, is 
acceptable to him {Acts 10 : 35), 

''"THIS verse is the bed-rock of God's moral 
* system. Before this statement all fine- 
spun systems of theological ethics go down like 
cobwebs before a whirlwind. Goodness is 
goodness in earth or heaven. Righteousness 
is simply Tightness, and God can no more help 
loving it than you can help admiring beauty. 
It is ''acceptable" to him. It "finds" him. 
It thrills him. There are not two kinds of 
righteousness, any more than there are two 
kinds of straight lines. Do right. God will 
not reject your deed, whoever you are. 
Courage, tenderness, unselfishness, truthful- 
ness, purity, — these are as beautiful in the 
negro or the Chinaman as in the white man. 
When done because that divine sense of duty 
welling up from the deeps of the soul impels 
them, they have a virtue and beauty that are 
irresistible. They are permeated with the 
essence of religion. All true morality is at 
least unconscious religion. 
59 



Slow of heart to believe {Luke 24 : 25). 

I HAD rather be slow of wit than of heart. 
* Some people do not comprehend an argu- 
ment until the question is a dead issue. Some 
do not see a joke until others have had 
their laugh and forgotten it. Sorry for them ? 
Of course ! But it's not a thousandth part as 
bad as to have a snail-moving heart, slow to 
respond to love, slow to perceive goodness, 
slow to accept the divine. Some people's 
sympathies move like molasses. I like to see 
them explode like powder. I like to see them 
catch hold of evidences of God's love and 
goodness just as burrs seize upon sheep's 
wool. 

Showing the coats and garments <which 
Dorcas made (Acts 9 : 39). 

\17HAT have you got to "show" for your 
* * life ? What will your friends have to 
" show " when you are dead ? Many a man 
and woman lives through the whole cycle of 
life's glad, sad seventy years, and, after van- 
ishing, "leaves not a wrack behind." If 
their "works do follow them," they follow so 
close and swift as to disappear with the doer. 
It's easy enough to flatter ourselves in hours 
of vanity that we are of inestimable value to 
6q 






the world, but sit down with your conscience, 
and ask yourself, "What would my friends 
have to ' show ' if I should die to-night ? ' ' 
What have you done ? Think of all that 
has been spent and wasted to produce some 
of the unproductive wretches who live and 
die on earth. What toil and tears of par- 
ents and teachers and friends, what tons of 
good bread and beef, what miles of rich and 
valuable clothing, have been wasted on 
them ! And now they are gone, and their 
most charitable friends are empty- handed ; 
there is nothing to "show" for them. It 
was something to be able to hold up those 
little coats and garments, and say, "She did 
this." 



Thus it becometh us to fulfil aJl 
righteousness (Matt* 3 : 15), 

IN A door-yard an empty well, in a kitchen 
an empty larder, in a drawer an empty 
pocket-book, in a nursery an empty crib, in a 
workshop empty hands, in a bosom an empty 
heart ; or, a hive full of honey, a tree full of fruit, 
a grove full of singing birds, a house full of 
children and music, a mind full of knowledge, 
a heart full of love, and hands full of good 
works! Which do you like the better, emptiness 
61 



or fulness? It is time to stop "fiddling" 
with life, "scratching" the surface of the 
field, "dabbling" with a profession, "tri- 
fling" with religion. What we need is "to 
go the whole figure," "fulfil our ministry." 
Test truth, goodness, charity, duty, righteous- 
ness, to the very utmost. Let's see what 
there is in a life crowded full of struggle, faith, 
hope, love, and endeavor. 



c4nd they turned to the Lord (Acts 9 : 35)* 

TTOW easily and instinctively men "turn to 
the Lord" in great extremities and 
great opportunities ! Watch a crowd of peo- 
ple when the life-saving service is trying to 
rescue a man from shipwreck. They "turn 
to God," as weather-vanes turn to the wind. 
You can hear muttered prayers on every side. 
And in great revivals, when the love of 
heaven is unburdening guilty consciences and 
cheering saddened hearts, how the multitude 
"turns to the Lord"! At such times men 
know that God is everything, — the great mag- 
netic center and soul of the universe ; the 
source of life, of joy, of hope. Only turn. 
"Turn ye ! Turn ye, for why will ye die? " 
If you were God, would you not feel as he 
does, — that the sweetest thing on earth would 
62 



be the turning of human hearts to you, as 
the flowers turn to the sun, every hour and 
moment of its shining ? 



Thou hast nothing to draw with (John 4 : 11), 

AY, THERE is the rub ! The world, like a 
^* bountiful well, is full of good things, but 
the problem is how to get them. The well is 
deep, and so many people do not have the 
rope of money or brains or purpose with which 
to draw. I am not much of a political econo- 
mist. The whole present system may be 
wrong, and need righting, — I don't know. 
But there is one very simple way of getting 
things into better shape than they are now. 
Those of us who have ropes can lend them to 
those who have not. A helping hand is the 
longest rope in the world, and will reach the 
bottom of wells so deep that nothing else can 
touch them. 

A 

cAnd I will bless thee (Gen, 12 : 2). 

\17HETHER you believe it or not, every 
* ™ man that is born into the world may 
attain beatitude. Life may become a felicity. 
Perhaps not one in a thousand really finds it 
so ; but this is because they do not "get the 

63 



hang of it." I solemnly affirm that I have 
never passed a single day of life at the close of 
which I could have honestly said, ' ' Peace and 
felicity would have been impossible to-day." 
And I have had my share of hard ones, too. 
Nor do I believe that you could. The most 
terrible calamities contain secret blessings, as 
the hardest shells contain hidden nuts. There 
is "blessing" in life as surely as there is life 
in sunlight. It is in the nature of God to 
" bless." The trouble lies in our inability or 
unwillingness to accept. How few people 
know how to receive favors gracefully ! Fewer 
still know how to be blessed. It is a fine art. 



For God was with him {Acts SO : 38). 

A ND he is with every one who goes about do- 
ing good. Has that thought no splendors ? 
Think of it ! After you trace a good deed (a 
truly good deed) back through all its subtle, 
delicate, and often hidden, impulses, you come 
at last to God. What is it that prompts men 
and women to those marvels of patience, of 
devotion, of self-immolation, that starts the 
blood in our veins and brings the tears to our 
eyes ? You say patriotism, love of offspring, 
sense of duty, and a thousand other things. 
But this is like answering the question, What 

6 4 



moves the wheels of an engine ? by saying, 
" The piston rods." Back of everything else 
is steam. To me it is no more clear that it is 
sunlight which paints every flower and ripens 
every fruit than that it is the impact of God's 
own presence on the soul that produces all 
good deeds, pure thoughts, and loving words. 



We have sinned, because we hiCbe spoken 
against Jehovah (Num. 21 : 7), 

\17HAT a happy world it would be if repent- 
* " ance always followed sin instantly ! 
Suppose that wrong-doing invariably produced 
a feeling of contrition, just as over- work pro- 
duces fatigue, or over-eating nausea. It always 
does when the heart has been made right by 
the love of God in Christ. Without that won- 
derful alteration in the soul the effect of sin is 
strangely different. It may produce shame 
and guilt and fear, but always and everywhere 
it only makes us weaker and wickeder. Take 
the sin of "speaking against Jehovah." The 
first oath terrifies the little boy. He trembles. 
He is afraid that the trees heard it, and will 
whisper it to his father ; that the stars heard 
it, and will tell it to God. But nothing terri- 
ble happens, and he tries it again. This time 
he experiences a wild pleasure in his courage. 

65 



After a while he can swear every time he wants 
to without fear, and soon must swear, whether 
he wants to or not. With every oath he grows 
coarser and more insensible. By and by he 
glories in his shame. Don't hope that sin will 
cure itself. Clocks don't wind themselves up 
by running down, and neither do men. Evil is 
not in the heart like water in a basin or money 
in your purse. You cannot empty it by pour- 
ing it out or spending it. It is in your life, 
like the muscles in the arm of a blacksmith, to 
get bigger and stronger with use. 



Wett done, good and faithful 
seft>ant (Matt* 25 : 23). 

HTHE approbation of those we love and re- 
* spect is the most substantial reward of 
life. It is better than possession of the treas- 
ures we accumulate or the influence we ac- 
quire. The smile on the lips of mother, sister, 
or wife ; the hand-shake of father, brother, 
friend; the spoken or unspoken " well done," 
— what can be sweeter than this ? Wait ! 
Perhaps consciousness of the ability to do it 
again is the best of all. It is not the talents, 
but the power to gain more, that is the noblest 
fruit of life's endeavor. Is it not worth the 
struggle ? To know that in any sphere of ex 
66 



istence to which we may be translated we have 
acquired the power to do our duty I 



cAs the Spirit game them utterance (Acts 2:4), 

Y\ 7HAT beautiful words must those have 
* been, thus prompted by the Spirit ! I 

have occasionally heard such, coming like the 
richest music, lingering upon the ear in soft- 
ened echoes, returning to memory long after- 
wards like the murmur of a distant hymn. Do 
not believe that such words are spoken without 
some hard and even terrible preparation. 
Nothing comes out of the mouth in speech 
that has not in some way gone in by hard labor 
through some avenue of the intelligence. Such 
eloqent speeches as those disciples made, are 
not " chucked " into the mind by the Spirit 
of God like ready-made cartridges into a 
Winchester rifle ! It is true that there come 
great inspirational moments when thought 
flashes from the lips of great orators in lan- 
guage that surprises even themselves, but 
those thoughts were distilled in solemn hours 
when they burned the midnight oil, or trod 
the wine-press alone in some great and illu- 
minating experience. When I was a college 
boy, I used to wonder why I could not de- 
bate as well as the other fellows. I found 

6 7 



out at last that, while I was playing ball, 
they were ransacking the library ! What 
came out of these men at Pentecost had, in 
my firm belief, been put into them in those 
long days of humble study when they "com- 
panied with Jesus ' ' in his hard travail. 



Only be strong and very 
courageous {Josh* 1:7)* 

r "FHE hardest task I ever tackle is trying to 
be brave when I'm scared. It's a good 
deal like trying to be hot when you're cold. 
But even that is not impossible. There are 
a great many ways to get hot when you are 
cold. You can kindle a fire, and, if there 
isn't any wood, you can run. And if you are 
too stiff to run, you may be able to find some- 
body to thump you on the back, and keep your 
blood going that way. And it is the same 
with people who are scared. There are a 
thousand ways to get your heart back. And 
the best one I know is to "turn not to the 
right hand nor the left." In the vast majority 
of cases people are scared because they either 
know or suspect they are in the wrong. Get 
right. Get back into the "way," and your 
••grit" will return. Courage is the assurance 
oi divine approval. 

68 



'•But their eyes %ere holden that they 
should not knofo him {Luke 24 : 16), 

IV] OT "holden" by any cutside pressure. 
* All spiritually blinded eyes are ' ' holden ' ' 
from the inside. It is not surgical operation 
and magnifying glasses that improve the vision 
of the soul. It is the steady and persistent 
use of the inner eye itself. If you should stand 
for twenty years trying to see through a two- 
inch plank, you could not do it. The eye in 
all that time would not add a fraction of a de- 
gree to its penetrating power. But, so far as 
I know, there is not a spiritual mystery pre- 
sented to the soul into which it cannot pene- 
trate farther at the second glance than the 
first. If you do not recognize God in Christ 
to-day, you may to-morrow, by fixing your 
gaze steadily upon him. 



Saul laid <waste the church {Ads 8 : 3). 

TT OW easy it is to tear down the work that 
others have patiently done ! In every 
great city there are professional "wreckers." 
The builder begins at the bottom; the wreckers 
begin at the top. He builds up, they pull 
down. How easy it is to be a destroyer : 
Dynamite is the only instrument, anarchy the 
only motive, needed. I do not say that there 

6 9 



are no structures erected by human society 
that ought not to come down. It requires a 
very noble courage, sometimes, to ''lay waste" 
the works of those who have gone before us. 
But it is the most solemn, serious, dangerous 
business in the world. I'll give you the best 
rule there is : Never destroy a hope, or a cus- 
tom, or an institution, of human life, until you 
have a better thing to put in its place. Don't 
stop people's making candles until you give 
them petroleum. Don' t smash their kerosene- 
oil lamps until you get their gas-pipes laid. 
Don't tear out their gas-pipes until you have 
strung their electric wires. 



cAnd Jehovah hearkened to the <ooice 
of Israel {Nam, 21 : 3). 

\17E CANNOT say that God accepts every 
foolish challenge, or takes every man 
at his lightest word, but he maybe counted on 
as being most awfully faithful to people who 
put him to these solemn tests. If you are in 
desperate earnest, if you mean what you say, if 
you are prepared to stand by it at all cost, then 
try him. There is some principle in nature (I 
prefer to say in the heart of God) that accepts 
the challenge of a man who pledges his life to 
virtue and usefulness on condition that God 
70 



will fit him for them. If you don't believe it, 
try it. It comes pretty close to being a law of 
life that God gives us cities as fast as we are 
able to rule them wisely, and talents as fast as 
we are able to use them profitably. 



c4s 1 <was with Moses, so J will 

be with thee {Josh, I : 5). 

'T'HERE lies one of the most tremendous iri- 
spirations of life. No man has to per- 
form any painful task or travel any lonely way 
as an absolute "novitiate." Some one has 
always gone before him. He may, if he will, 
see indubitable proof that God will care for 
him in the fact that he has been with his pre- 
decessors. Does your experience in life seem 
perfectly unique ? You are mistaken. Mil- 
lions have traveled the same road before, and 
God has been with them. When Columbus 
put out on the limitless ocean, from whose 
distant horizon every other mariner had turned 
back in horror, even he could not say that he 
was alone and single in his adventure. Ten 
thousand other mariners had made attempts 
as daring, in one way or another. There is 
no experience of life that is new. Millions 
have gone through what you are having to 
endure, and God was with them. Have you 
7i 



lost your fortune ? Are you going blind ? 
Are you about to die ? Well, good friend, 
look about you. See the trials of your pre- 
decessors. God was with them. Why not 
with you? 

cAnd the pillar of cloud removed from 
before them, and stood behind 
them {Exod. 14 : 19). 

TN ALL the imagery and symbolism of 
human life nothing has ever surpassed 
that of the "pillar of cloud and fire." The 
most cultivated imaginations in China, Persia, 
India, Egypt, and Greece, fell short of this sub- 
lime conception. Some of the readers of this 
marvelous story may doubt, or even disbelieve, 
that there was an actual mist of fire or dew 
thus shifting about these wandering slaves. 
Well, beware, good friend, of losing the 
majesty, beauty, and import of this immortal 
symbol. Do not let your incredulity or skep- 
ticism blind you to a conception of life sub- 
lime beyond exaggeration. There was never 
yet man or nation born into this world who 
was not accompanied and guarded thus mys- 
teriously. Through all these glad, sad, sev- 
enty years, something (we may not know 
exactly what) goes shiningly before us in the 
darkness, and pilots us on our way. And 
72 



when the day dawns it retires behind us, and 
stands between us and our adversaries. 
Whether you call it God or nature, there it 
is. You may refuse to see it or to believe in 
it. No matter ; it never leaves you. While 
you live, this invisible light leads you, this in- 
visible cloud defends you. Nothing can de- 
stroy you until the time appointed. Now, 
who cannot see that the difference in the 
spiritual lives of men lies in the perceiving, or 
not perceiving, these sublime ministrations ? 
The man who is blind to them is nevertheless 
attended by them, but stumbles wretchedly 
along his way. The man who is alive to 
them, and through such marvelous imagery 
and symbolism brings them within the range 
of his vision, travels onward with song and 
gladness. 

/ die; but God %ilt surely 
<oisit you {Gen, 50 : 24), 

"THERE you have the ultimate consolation 
of all reformers and philanthropists. 
Men think of themselves (and others think of 
them) that the objects of compassion who lean 
upon them for support, or the institutions 
which stand in their benefactions, cannot get 
along without them. No ; men die, but God 
abides. Props fall out from under buildings, 
73 



and piers from bridges, but gravity never loses 
its energy. It is gravity, and not props or piers, 
that does the business. It is God, and not 
individuals, or even institutions, that keeps 
human society in order. The greatest Joseph 
or Washington or Lincoln is only a medium 
through which the divine power operates. 
They die, but God continues his ceaseless 
ministrations. The nurses depart, the Great 
Physician continues his visits. 



cAnd suddenly there came from 
heaven {Acts 2:2)* 

CUDDEN things seem disconnected and iso- 
^ lated, but they are not. They are the 
results of long trains of antecedent circum- 
stances. It only takes a second for the light- 
ning to flash, but think how long it has taken 
to gather. The French Revolution seemed to 
boil over in an instant, but it had been seeth- 
ing for centuries. This outburst of the divine 
life, of the Holy Spirit, had been preceded by 
ages of toil and suffering of the heroes and 
martyrs of Israel, by the life and death of 
Jesus, by the silent brooding of the spirits in 
the hearts of men. There have to be ages of 
splitting and drying and laying the kindling- 
wood. Then comes the fire — suddenly. It 
74 



would be more pleasant to live when the fire 
of a revival bursts forth, but perhaps more 
useful to live when its materials are being gath- 
ered. 

cAll the house of Israel lamented 
after Jehovah (/ Sam, 7:2)* 

'"PHIS fact discloses a law. It is a principle 
of mortal life that, however well humanity 
has gotten along without God, for a time, 
it sooner or later turns toward him with con- 
scious need and passionate desire. This feel- 
ing first manifests itself in vague and inarticu- 
late longings, then in bitter lamentations. 
Vegetation may endure a few days without 
sunlight, but not forever, and its need is re- 
vealed in drooping leaves and withering stalks. 
The dependence of the souls of men on God 
is no less vital. It is no less vital than that of 
little children on their parents, who, if left 
in their nurseries, may play contentedly 
for a few moments. Then comes that first 
uneasy flash of consciousness that they are 
alone ; then the timidity ; then the fear ; then 
the agony j then the loud outcry. It is this 
same emotional experience through which we 
"grown-ups" must pass when we discover 
that we too are playing alone in God's great 
universe. 

75 



Whither thou goest, I will go {Ruth I : 16). 

DERHAPS, if it were possible to see through 
what self-denial a genuine friendship 
must lead us, none would ever be formed. 
Few of us can tolerate the logic of love, which 
is, " Where thou goest, lodgest, sufferest, 
diest, I will be as near thee as thy shadow." 
To secure and bestow such friendship is to 
fulfil the highest function of life. Do you 
want such a friend ? Make yourself necessary 
to somebody. As sure as there must be foot- 
holds or trellises or bark on trees for climbing 
plants and vines, there must be something in 
you for friendship to attach itself to. Love 
can live upon itself alone, but friendship must 
feed on worthiness. Therefore, the way to 
secure a friend is to be one. "He that hath 
friends must show himself friendly. " "A true 
friend is one soul in two bodies, ' ' said Aristotle. 



He that is but little in the kingdom of Goa 
is greater than he {Luke 7 : 28), 

A FTER all, it is not great talents, great in- 
*^ tellect, great power, great genius, that 
God most loves. It is those gentle and noble 
characteristics inspired by a sense of duty to 
men and to God. Many a servant in a palace 
has been greater than the king upon his 
7 6 









throne, many a soldier in the ranks greater 
than the general on his horse. Many a pupil 
trembling under the eye of the great professor 
has been finer, nobler, grander, than his in- 
structor. Specific gravity varies with the ele- 
ments. Some things that are very heavy in 
air are very light in water. Some things that 
are very small on earth are very large in 
heaven. 

He that overcometh shall inherit 
these things {Rev. 21 : 7). 

HPHE conquering life, — let us live it. There 
are no absolutely insuperable obstacles 
along the pathway. If there are chasms, there 
is also a way to bridge them. If there are 
lions, there is also a way to slay them. Is there 
a mountain ? Well, when God puts a moun- 
tain in your path, it is an intimation that there 
is a place for you on its summit. It is safe to 
say that the great masses of mankind go down 
to the grave with a consciousness of defeat. 
They have been thwarted in their plans, 
deceived in others and in themselves. For 
this there are two reasons : In the first place, 
they have struggled for impossible ends, — 
like gaining happiness through wrong-doing. 
In the second place, they do not appreciate 
that certain kinds of failure are the most sub- 
77 



lime successes. Christ failed, judged from 
their view-point. The life of a man who 
keeps pure and sweet and hopeful is a mag- 
nificent success, and ought to fill him with 
irrepressible joy, even though he dies in the 
poorhouse. 

<Peace be unto you {John 20 : 19)* 

HPHE whole longing of our Lord's life may 
A be almost summed up in those words. 
Always and everywhere he was impelled by a 
ceaseless desire to bring peace to harassed 
men, peace between nations, peace between 
neighbors, peace in the soul itself. That was 
his passion. "O troubled hearts, receive this 
gift of peace ! ' ' What a passion ! How wide 
the contrast to ours ! And how pathetic that 
a man so full of peace, so eager to bestow it 
upon others, should have been the wholly in- 
nocent cause of so much strife ! It was not 
his fault. It is not the fault of the sun that 
dead bodies decay at the touch of its beams. 
Nor is it the fault of love that its presence 
arouses and maddens the hearts of the wicked. 
But the longing of Christ will yet be satisfied. 
His love will conquer. Peace will be the uni- 
versal condition of existence. Calm confi- 
dence, unbroken repose of mind. — this is the 

7 8 



ultimate attainment of human life in its di- 
vinely guided struggles upward. 

A 

Whose heart the Lord opened {Acts 16 : 14). 

TT'S wonderful to see God open a human 
* heart. There is no other power that can 
do it. See the rain open a bud, the frost open 
a burr, a locksmith open a safe. Outside 
pressure has to be brought to bear on closed 
hearts, and so God comes with the frost of 
sorrow, the dew of a new joy, or he winds his 
way through the intricacies of the wards of the 
lock by an argument, or an epigram, or a pang 
of conscience. One after another yields as he 
stands there knocking. His providence and 
grace are mighty hammers. They sometimes 
shatter the hardest hearts, and sometimes melt 
them. 

& 

c4nd the children of Israel set 
forward {Num. 10 : 12). 

" CET forward!" Keep that motto in 
*^ mind. All true progress is onward 
and upward. If you are on the wrong track, 
don' t "lay down ! ' ' Turn squarely round, and 
get out headforemost. Nulla vestigia retrorsa, 
— that is, "Never a step backward." Don't 
79 



get into the wrong road. Stop and look for 
the signs ; ask questions. Make a little sure 
progress every day. " Get a move on you." 
' ' Keep making headway. ' ' What did you 
accomplish last year? Nothing? That's 
awful ! "Get ahead ; " put a little money in 
the bank ; add another friend to your list ; 
earn a "raise" in your salary; conquer an- 
other bad habit j acquire another virtue ; set 
up a tall stake to mark your last year's accom- 
plishment, and don't rest a minute until you 
* ' go it one better. ' ' 



Forgive {Gen. 50 : 17). 

''"THOSE mental processes by which " for- 
1 giveness ' ' is formed in the soul are the 
most beautiful in the world. What instinctive 
admiration we have for a soul that manu- 
factures forgiveness ! It is wonderful to go 
into a mill, and see them take old dirty rags, 
wash them, chop them up, soak them to a 
pulp, and then roll them out into great sheets 
of snow-white paper. It is wonderful to see a 
great river receive the turbid waters of drains 
and sewers, roll them about, tumble them to- 
gether, throw them up to air and sunlight, and, 
fifty miles after they have carried them past 
one great city, give them to another clear as 

8o 



crystal and fit to drink. But this is nothing 
compared to seeing minds like those of Joseph 
and Jesus receive into themselves curses, in- 
justice, insult, evil, and by that marvelous 
alchemy of love give them out in the form of 
kindness, sympathy, and forgiveness. I know 
such hearts. It makes no difference what you 
throw in to their wheels, nothing comes out 
but gentleness. 

Cleanse your conscience [Heb, 9 : 14), 

'"FO THAT great business Jesus gave his life. 
* Not to inventing machinery to lighten 
labor, not to discovering laws to explain the 
mysteries of nature, not to devising new insti- 
tutions to remodel civil government, but to 
cleansing consciences, to teaching men how to 
throw off the burden of guilt, how to live at peace 
with themselves, their neighbors, God. This 
is the noblest business in the world. There 
are no two different feelings more analogous 
than, on coming in from toil tired, hot, and 
dirty, to plunge into a bath, and emerge 
rested, cool, and clean j and, going to God 
with the heart full of filthy and wicked 
thoughts, and rising from the knees penitent, 
forgiven, restored to terms of confidence and 
love. To be a teacher of that art, — is it not 
sublime ? 

81 



Let us return into Egypt {Num. 14 : 4). 

\17HAT ? Back to slavery ? Never ! It is 
* better to die with one's feet on the soil 
of liberty, and have for one' s last breath the 
sweet air of freedom. When the Spanish mes- 
sengers found Pizarro and his companions half 
starved and sick, and commanded them to 
abandon their foolhardy expedition to Peru, 
the old adventurer drew a line in the sand 
with the point of his sword, and told the cow- 
ards to return, but bade every hero to cross it 
with him. They crossed to a man. If you 
have started out to live the "divine" life, — 
the life of purity, of peace, of unselfishness, — 
don' t turn back, though death and hell should 
seem to stand in your way. 



cAnd Jacob's *coett <was there {John 4 : 6), 



j\] O OBJECT in nature is more beautiful or 
more useful than a water source. To 
dig a well, to open a path to a spring, to pipe 
a stream to a fountain, — these are among the 
most noble deeds of human life. Some people 
are like wells, and have much in them that is 
useful to their fellows, but it can only be got- 
ten at with a long rope like that at Jacob's 
well. Some are like those water-soaked fields 
82 






on Western prairies, where the horses find 
drink by stamping with their hard hoofs. 
Some are like generous springs with water 
trickling quietly over their green lips. Some 
are like great copious fountains flinging the 
sparkling flood high into air. Some are as 
dry as an abandoned well in Texas, down 
into which I once let a bucket with a rope one 
hundred feet long, only to dip up mud ! What- 
ever else you are, don't be a dry well ! 



cAnd they could not answer again 
unto these things [Luke 14 : 6), 

'"THERE are two unanswerable arguments, — 
absolute truthfulness of word and abso- 
lute beauty of deed. Men abuse us, condemn 
us, suspect us, defy us, but there is something 
about a truth told with eyes wide open, and a 
beautiful deed done with a heart full of love, 
that silences and convicts. Your enemies may 
rage and froth at the mouth, they may burn 
you at the stake or hang you on a gibbet, but 
their words of condemnation die in their 
throats. Truth and goodness — these were the 
weapons with which Christ won his victories. 
And they are as mighty to-day as ever. Recall 
the calm assurance and the exalted happiness 
that came to you when you stood up fearlessly 

83 



and told the truth, or courageously and did the 
right, and then acknowledge to yourself that 
"a boy is a fool who ever hesitates an instant." 



God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10 : 34). 

OEFORE what earthly tribunal do men 
^ stand solely on their merits ? In the judg- 
ment of what individual do the mere accesso- 
ries of life, the superficial elements, count for 
nothing ? In spite of ourselves, we base our 
estimate of character on wealth, money, cul- 
ture, manners, dress ! Ninety-nine out every 
hundred of us give ' ' the benefit of the doubt ' ' 
to a woman in a tailor-made suit or a man in a 
"swallow-tail" coat. Who does not blush 
at the superficiality, the partiality, of his own 
judgment of men? Who would not be glad 
to live in a social circle or do business in a 
community where nothing but intrinsic worth 
counted ? Fancy the thrill that would shoot 
through the hearts of honest laboring men, 
who have all their lives seen people shrink 
away from their dirty clothes and calloused 
hands, when they felt that at last their neigh- 
bors had taken them at their true worth, and 
that they were now standing on the simple 
platform of manhood ! Your day is coming, 
my dear fellow, and it will be when you stand 
before God. He is no respecter of persons. 
84 



cAstanished at his teaching {Mark I : 22). 

r\F COURSE, they were, and still are, at 
^^ the teaching of any man who goes 
straight to the heart of things as he did. For 
he was as direct in his teachings as in his do- 
ings. Jesus was always looking for the ' ' heart ' ' 
of the thing. His mind went straight to the 
mark. He swept away all the mists in an in- 
stant, and made his hearers see just what he 
saw. Now and then we meet a man who talks 
about things so simply that we say, ' ' Why in 
the world didn't I say that myself? It lay on 
the very surface, and yet I overlooked it." 
Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln had 
a way of thus seeing and saying what every 
one else overlooked in the realm of scientific 
and practical affairs. Some men are gifted 
with this power at birth, but any one can ac- 
quire something of it if he will only believe 
that the " heart" of the subject is the thing 
to look for. 

it 

Hoxvbeit the people that dwelt in the 
land are strong (Num. 13 : 28). 

r\¥ COURSE! Was it ever otherwise? 
^^ All great prizes are at the top, and not 
the bottom, of the ladder ; behind barred 
doors, not open ones. The children of Anak 
g; ard every treasure worth the love of man. 
85 



Take the pearl, which lies at the bottom of the 
sea. Take liberty, which is not a donation, 
but an achievement ; not granted by an easy 
vote of a legislature, but attained by infinite 
toil and suffering. Take God, who conceals 
himself beyond the discovery of every eye but 
the one which will not take * ' No ' * for an 
answer. " Raise the stone and there thou 
shalt find me, cleave the wood and there am 
I." Lift! Cleave! "I will make the sal- 
vation of my soul my life work," said Jona- 
than Edwards. I say this : An easy life is 
always a bad one. A Canaan without con- 
quest is (ninety-nine times out of a hundred) 
either a curse or a calamity. 



Go . • ♦ teUJohn the things which ye 
have seen and heard (Luke 7 : 22). 

THE fishes leave no trail in the sea, and the 
birds leave no trail in the air, but every 
living thing that creeps or crawls or runs across 
the surface of the earth leaves the marks of its 
passage behind it. The lion leaves his foot- 
prints and the carcasses of his victims. The 
snail leaves a slimy wake, and, if our eyes were 
sharp enough, we could see the marks of the 
feet of the crickets and the grasshoppers. And 
so men leave their marks, — the conqueror in 
86 



desolated provinces, the statesmen in benefi- 
cent laws, the artist in great pictures, the archi- 
tect in noble buildings. The marks which 
Jesus left behind him were happy homes and 
hearts. You could trace him from Nazareth 
to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem to Caper- 
naum, by the people whom he had healed of 
their diseases and lifted out of their sins. 
These trails cannot be covered up. What are 
you leaving behind you ? 



Is less than all seeds ; but , • • becometh 
a tree (Matt. 13 : 32). 

1VTEVER, never, never despise a thing be- 
*■ cause it is small. I can still remember 
the vague feeling of wonder in my heart when, 
as a child, I said over those little old-fashioned 
lines : 

" Little drops of water, little grains of sand, 
Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land." 

It always seemed to me that it ought to have 
been just the reverse. I know better now, and I 
take off my hat to all little bits of things, — 
little brooks, little eggs, little microbes, little 
boys, and little girls, not because they are 
little, but because of what is tucked away out 
of sight in their littleness. When some one 

8 7 



disparaged a boy because he was little, Daniel 
Webster said, "It is out of just such things 
that men are made." The littlest, puniest 
child in that class of yours may some time sit 
in a presidential chair or judge angels. Be 
careful how yon treat him. 



cAnd hawing given thanks {John 6 : IV). 

CVEN if gratitude were not a duty, we should 
still try to cultivate it, just for the pleas- 
ure it excites in the soul. The sensations which 
we feel when gratitude wells from the heart 
are almost perfect bliss. They are what a 
rose would feel if it were conscious of its own 
perfume, or a spring of the pure water gurgling 
up out of its depths. To me ingratitude is 
repulsive and horrible. Did you ever watch 
the keepers feed the tigers in a museum ? It 
is the absence of gratitude that makes the 
sight horrible. All the eye of the tiger says is 
"More, more, more!" And I have seen 
men eat in the same way. How much better 
than an animal is the man who does not feel 
gratitude for his daily bread and all his other 
mercies ! How different is the light in the 
eye of a tiger from that in the eye of a sick 
soldier when a Sister of Charity gives him a 
draught of cold water ! That light is gratitude, 



a light more beautiful than that of the evening 
star. Are you cultivating it in yourself? 



Remember the sabbath day, to 
keep it holy (Exod. 20 : 8). 

V/"OU can judge a man's intellectual, moral, 
* and spiritual attainments by the use he 
makes of his Sabbaths. If they bore him, it is 
as certain that he has not achieved true cul- 
ture, as it is if he is bored by literature and art. 
If he devotes them to idleness or pleasure, it 
is like letting a pianola stand closed, or using 
it to play rag-time music. I should be more 
ashamed not to know how to make my Sabbath 
days a supreme joy and blessing than not to 
know how to spend a thousand dollars to my 
own advantage. Men need to bathe their 
souls in Sabbath peace and quiet as they need 
to bathe their bodies in pure water. It takes 
time to be holy. Men can no more be holy 
without quiet hours of exposing themselves to 
the influence of the divine Spirit than an apple 
can get mellow without weeks of hanging in 
the sun. You may be able to keep honest 
and industrious and faithful by being ever- 
lastingly on the hop, skip, and jump, but holy 
(calm, serene, tranquil, at rest in moral equi- 
librium) you will never be without your hours 

89 



and days of meditation and worship. Men are 
not polished into holiness by being eternally 
rolled along the shore of the ocean of life, like 
pebbles. Don' t try to keep Sunday holy, but 
your self. 

& 

He ihzt l&oeth his neighbor haih 
fulfilled the U<w (Rom. 13 : 10). 

Y/"ES, love is a "short cut" to the goal of 
duty. Do you want to be happy ? 
Learn how to love. Do you want to meet 
every obligation of life ? Learn how to love. 
Everything goes easy to the lover. From 
what mysterious herb hath God extracted this 
strange potency by which pain is made pleasure, 
and the most disagreeable drudgery of life a lux- 
ury? If you never learn any other lesson, learn 
how to love. This is not so easy. It is easy 
enough to love what you do love, but how are 
you going to love what you don't love? Ay, 
there's the rub ! What ! love disagreeable, 
offensive, unlovely people? To' be sure! 
There is certain to be something good and 
sweet in the worst of them. And besides 
there is that strange and wonderful love of 
"benevolence" — the power of the soul to 
wish the worst people well, which, if it is 
aroused, develops into a love as pure as the 
love of God. It's hard to get it started, but 
90 



the capacity is in you, so rouse it up ! When 
you can control your affections, and love whom 
you ought to love, that strangely beautiful and 
wonderful feeling will fulfil all the duties of life, 
as electricity seems likely to do all the work of 
the world. Yes, love is the "short cut" to 
the goal of duty. 

ft 

cAnd he could not be hid (Mark 7 : 24) » 

f^ENIUSof any kind is like fire. Amidst 
^* the combustible elements of human life 
it will burn itself out into view. There will be 
many a young fellow who will need to be told 
this, for there are thousands of them who are 
already getting embittered at the lack of 
"recognition." I do not say that merely 
potential genius — genius which exists latent 
— will always be discovered ; but I do say 
that genius which is alive, active, efficient, 
actually accomplishing things for the enjoy- 
ment or betterment of mankind, can no more 
be concealed than fire. The world will not 
dig you out of your hole, as boys dig out wood- 
chucks, if you merely have the undeveloped 
capacity to do things. But if you are actually 
singing a song, or writing a poem, or preach- 
ing a sermon, or building a house, or paint- 
ing a picture, or shoeing a horse, in such a 
way as to give pleasure or profit to men, they 

9* 



will find you, even if you are down in a well. 
If you do not get recognition, ten chances to 
one it is because you don' t play your part to 
the satisfaction of the audience. 



He leadeih me beside still waters {Psa.. 23 :2). 

"THE soul of man, in one respect at least, 
* shares the twofold necessity of water, — 
agitation and repose. There are times when 
we need to be shaken up by the fury of the 
rapids, and others when we need to be spread 
out in the calm stillness of the lake. To the 
young, all repose is stagnation. They love to 
launch their barks on stormy seas. But there 
comes a time when the soul longs for still 
waters — " waters of rest." The final meas- 
urement of life values discloses the ineffable 
worth of stillness and quiet. There is no 
power like that of silence and repose. The 
heart that is to be filled to the brim with holy 
joy must be still. Energy resides in tranquil- 
lity. The stars and the sun rise in silence, 
and so do great events. Bees work in silence, 
and so do thoughts. Trees grow in aphony and 
muteness, so also do characters. But rest and 
peace are not products of external conditions. 
The soul may be tempest-tossed on the most 
stagnant sea, and yet as calm as heaven 
92 



even amidst the breakers. * ' Diogenes found 
more rest in his tub than Alexander on his 
throne." " Weariness can snore upon the 
flint when rusty sloth finds the down pillow 
hard." All true peace and rest and quietness 
are the gifts of God through the consciousness 
of his presence. 



He <was much perplexed (Mark 6 : 20). 

HHHERE is a fearful fascination about both 
evil and good. We are drawn towards 
both, as men are drawn to the edges of preci- 
pices and the tops of mountains. We are 
pulled both ways like iron filings between pow- 
erful magnets. They ' ' turn our heads. ' ' We 
are " perplexed." Herod halted and hesi- 
tated between John and his boon companions. 
When Herodias sang, he thought there was 
nothing else in the whole world worth his 
while. But when John transfixed him with his 
deep-set eye, and thrilled him with the very 
eloquence of heaven, it seemed to him as if he 
could throw away his scepter and his crown 
without a struggle to adopt the beautiful life 
that he described. And when neither of them 
were with him, when he was all alone, when 
silence brooded around him, then he did not 
know what to do, for he was tormented with a 
93 



desire for both. But he had to choose at last, 
and so do we all. We may put it off and put 
it off, but finally we shall be compelled to de- 
cide. You cannot always halt between the 
two sets of companions who are trying to claim 
you for their own. One of them will get you 
at last. You had better decide before it is 
decided for you by some terrible mistake you 
stumble into. 



This is of a. truth the prophet that cometh 
into the <wortd (John 6 : 14), 

TT CAME out at last, — the real truth about 
* this wonderful being. Be sure of this, — 
the secret nature of every one of us will 
sooner or later be revealed. Our Lord's 
prophetic gifts " revealed themselves." All 
real talents are like fire, — they burn out into 
view. If you have a gift, do not be afraid 
that it will never be discovered. Do not go 
around thrusting it into other people's faces. 
Do not be bragging of it, describing it, calling 
attention to it. If you have the capacity to 
stand at the head of your class, or run the 
business in which you are now only an errand 
boy, it will leak out. The boss or the super- 
intendent will see it creeping out of every little 
deed you do. 

94 



They <a>ere moved with 
indignation (Matt. 21 : 15). 

\A)U can judge a man always and every- 
where by what angers him. What is it 
that makes you maddest ? Is it injustice ? Is 
it impurity ? Is it vice of any kind ? That is 
a noble feeling that flames with a sudden pas- 
sion at any meanness and at any wrong. 
But these men (shame upon them!) were 
angered by innocence, by the recognition of 
virtue, by the triumph of holiness. If your 
heart swells with bitterness because of the 
prosperity of some one who is innocent and 
good, be sure that it is the abode of an evil 
spirit, and needs cleansing. 



He that Ufoeth his life toseth it (John 12 : 25). 

IF YOU get strong, and then try to keep 
A your strength without using it, you will 
find that every muscle grows flabby, soft, and 
weak. If you get power, and try to keep it 
without exercising it, it will do you as much 
good as steam will do a boiler with no wheels 
to turn. If you get money, and try to enjoy 
it without spending it, or giving it away, any 
pleasure you derive from it will make you 
selfish, mean, and low. Nature works auto- 
matically in this field. When my furnace gets 
95 



too hot, a damper closes, and the draft shuts 
off. Nature operates the machinery of your 
heart in the same way. If you get a certain 
amount of this world's goods, and do not 
divide with others, the damper closes, the 
sensibility to happiness ceases, the power to 
enjoy cools. 

A 

If thou *wHt indeed deliver, ♦ . . then I 
<Q)itl utterly destroy {Num., 21 : 2)* 

1 T IS a perilous experiment to offer condi- 
tions to God, for the case looks so differ- 
ent when the conditions are met ! Many a 
mother has promised to dedicate a baby to 
God (if he would only give her one) who has 
forgotten the promise in the selfish sweetness 
of its love. Many a man has sworn to give 
his fortune to benevolence (if God would per- 
mit him to make it) who, when he has ac- 
quired it, could not resist its fascinations. 
Many a boy has vowed himself to the ministry 
(if God would give him an education) who 
afterward could not resist the temptation to 
use it for his own aggrandizement. And yet a 
pledge like this is solemn beyond words. 
Have you sworn ? Fulfil ! You may affirm 
that circumstances have altered, and excuse 
yourself in a thousand ways. The solemn fact 
remains that a promise made to the invisible 

96 



God has a million fold more sacredness than 
to an earthly friend. I'll lose my guess if 
these words do not fall under the eye of some 
one whose life has been perverted or thwarted 
by failing to stick to a pledge. You know 
how true they are ! 



Wherefore didst thou doubt ? {Matt. U : 31.) 

" \17HEN he saw the wind boisterous." 
" " Well, that is the way with most of 
us. It is easy to be brave when there is no 
danger. I too am a fine sailor when I can see 
my face in the water from the upper deck. 
It is the whistle of the wind in the cordage, 
the wild plunge of the vessel down into the 
trough of the waves, that takes the nerve out 
of me. Do you know what all fear is ? All 
fear is unfaith. You can no more be afraid 
when your heart is full of confidence than you 
can be hungry when your stomach is full of 
food. There are no two things so much alike, 
and so unlike, as courage and temerity, and as 
faith and presumption. In their incipient 
stages you have to tie a pink ribbon around 
faith to tell it from presumption, just as the 
mothers of twins do around the finger of one 
of the babies to tell it from the other. But 
when they are full grown the difference is an- 
97 



tipodal. Presumption believes that it can do 
anything it wants to do j Faith believes that it 
can do anything that it ought to do. It is a 
shame and a sin to doubt that you can acom- 
plish anything that is your duty. Plunge into 
water, dash through fire, defy frost, if a duty 
lies on the other side. You may burn, you 
may drown, you may freeze, but nothing can 
harm you. Do you understand that ? If you 
do, you know the secret of life. 



Choose you this day whom ye 
<witl serve (Josh, 24 : 15), 

'TO TRAIN the mind to a swift, free, in- 
telligent, and right choice between the 
alternatives of existence is to me the sum and 
substance of our business of life. This busi- 
ness is not to think profoundly, nor to act 
bravely, so much as to choose wisely, for upon 
right choice all else depends. Never leave an 
important matter to accident. Never "flip a 
cent," nor "cut a pack of cards," nor consult 
a fortune-teller, nor let others choose for you. 
How the mind shrinks back from the pain ot 
decision ! No matter, — force it on. Make 
it "take a decision," as a good fox-hunter 
compels a reluctant horse to "take" a ditch 
or a fence. Don't be a straw in a current, a 

9 8 



leaf in a wind, a boy in a crowd. ' ' Choose 
her or lose her" is the stern mandate that 
God has written over the door of fortune, and 
also eternal life. "Choose me or lose me" 
he has also inscribed over the portal of his 
own palace. 

Jesus therefore, being *to>earied (Jonn 4:6), 

A ND so the "divine man" also suffered 
^^ fatigue. Well, without it, he would never 
have known the sweetness of rest, and no more 
would you and I. But full of blessings as 
hours of fatigue may be, they are dangerous 
too, and we must look out for the perils of 
physical prostration. It is through the shadows 
of these hours that the assassins of hope and 
joy steal upon us. Most people do not know 
what is the matter with them when they are 
tired. They think that the whole world is out 
of joint, while the real trouble is in their own 
joints ! I have seen men who always thought 
that the voices of their children were twice as 
loud, the coffee three times as weak, and the 
bread four times as heavy, at night as in the 
morning. I wonder they never learn that 
tired eyes and ears see and hear double. Be- 
ware of the ' ' tired hours, ' ' Little Bill ! 
Things are never anywhere near so dark and 
bad as they seem to you when you come home 
99 



from a football game with your nose all bloody, 
your arms all bruised, and your legs and back 
aching so that you can hardly sit up at the 
table. Jesus was just as tired as you are, and, 
no doubt, things looked just as dark some- 
times ; but he was never cross, and he always 
knew that, when he got rested, they would look 
brighter. 



Thou preparest a table before me in the 
presence of mine enemies {Psa. 23 : 5). 

LJ ERE is a swift, brilliant, fleeting glimpse 
of another method of God's providence. 
It is not his idea of the education of men 
never to give them sight and fight of their 
enemies. He does not take them to solitary 
and safe retreats to feed them. He spreads 
their tables in the very presence of their foes 
to give them nerve. There was once a general 
who educated his horses to tranquillity amidst 
confusion and danger by putting their oats on 
the heads of the drums and having the drummers 
beat them while the trembling animals were 
feeding. Victory is inscribed on the banners 
of the army that is able to take its rations in 
the presence of an enemy. The man who can 
eat and sleep in the face of disaster will never 
know final defeat. 

ioo 



When they <were fully awake, they 
sa t w his glory (Luke 9 : 32), 

T T IS only when we are wide awake that we 
•"■ see the real glories of life. How different 
the world and life itself looks to those who are 
half asleep ! Did you ever notice the differ- 
ence in the faces of the people when they start 
for town in the morning, and come home at 
night ? At night the people are all hunched 
over, cross, dispirited, and gloomy. In the 
morning every man thinks he is going to make 
a hundred dollars tfefore sunset ! How differ- 
ent the country looks to you after you have 
been fishing all day, and have a five-mile walk 
to get home, from what it did when you set 
out, fresh from a long night's sleep, in the 
morning ! It is just as beautiful in the even- 
ing light as in the morning, but it doesn't look 
so. You are half asleep, and cross. Every- 
thing seems ugly and gloomy. Judge life by 
the morning hours. 

Every one that believeth on htm shall 
receive remission of sins (Acts 10 : 43), 

f PUT all other mysteries of the visible or 
* invisible world second to that of the re- 
mission of sin through confession and pardon. 
It is wonderful to see light dispel darkness, to 
see water cleanse the soil of our garments, 

IOI 



magnetism attract iron filings, electricity pro- 
pel cars, Rontgen rays pierce solid iron, Mar- 
coni receive a message across the ocean without 
wires ! We are so fashioned that when we 
open our minds to the full force of these mys- 
teries we are moved to awe. But I am moved 
more deeply still when I see a little child with 
a guilty conscience creep into its mother's 
arms, confess its sin, and feel the pain and an- 
guish die away at her words of pardon ; and to 
see a man whose life has been base and vile 
prostrate himself before God in agony, pour 
out his soul in penitence, and suddenly be- 
come so conscious of forgiving love as to rise 
in a hushed and awful gladness, — this is the 
greatest marvel of existence. 



/ shall not <wa.nt (Psa. 23 : /)♦ 

TT OW to hold that sublime faith in provi- 
dence consistently with a sense of per- 
sonal responsibility for daily bread and clothing, 
is a psychological as well as a religious prob- 
lem. To live tranquilly, like a sheep in a 
green meadow by a still running brook, and 
also like a man with grocers' and butchers' 
and shoemakers' bills to be met at the first of 
the month, is no child's play. To have strug- 
gled heroically until one is fifty without a 
102 



dollar in the bank to show for it ; to realize 
that one's " productive period" will terminate 
in a decade, and yet to look forward with a 
sublime faith that we " shall not want," while 
life gets harder every day and each gray hair 
and wrinkle shuts another door against us, — 
this is a sublime achievement. But let us re- 
member that our necessities never equal our 
wants ; that it is our imaginary wants which 
are so numerous, while our real wants are very 
few, and that hundreds of us would have never 
known want at all if we had not first known 
waste. And let us remember also that it is 
easy to exaggerate the importance of all our 
own fuming and fussing to supply our daily re- 
current needs. For, after all, it is God's sun 
and rain, his wind and steam, his heart and 
arm, that really keep us from need. 



For am I in the place of God? {Gen, 50 : 19,) 

\7ENGEANCE is the prerogative of God. 
" Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith 
the Lord." Nothing is more presumptuous, 
nothing more dangerous, nothing more cer- 
tain to "work backward," to "blowout at 
the breech," than the effort to stand in the 
place of God when it comes to the matter of 
'* righting wrongs." Society has to restrain, 
103 



but not ' ' vindicate. ' ' Only God knows ex- 
actly what retribution to mete out to wrong 
doers. But there is a way in which we may 
try to stand "in the place of God." It is by 
doing good. And there is no other joy so 
profound as the feeling, "I am doing God's 
work, I am standing in the place of God," — 
to this poor little orphan boy, to this widow 
and her fatherless children, to this poor con- 
vict who has just come out of prison, to this 
traveler who has fallen among thieves, to this 
prodigal who has come to himself. Every 
true-hearted man or woman knows by some 
sweet experience what it is to have that deep 
and almost awful feeling, as if one were the 
good God himself, when protecting some poor 
child of misfortune. 

He restoreth my soul (Psa. 23 : 5). 

DESTORATION maybe said to be thekey- 
A ^ word to the philosophy of the Bible. 
That great book is saturated with the ideas of 
rejuvenation, regeneration, and recovery. 
"Repent ye therefore and turn again that 
your sins may be blotted out, that so there 
may come seasons of refreshing from the pres- 
ence of the Lord, and that he may send the 
Christ who hath been appointed for you, even 
Jesus, whom the heaven must receive until the 
104 



time of the restoration (American Revision) of 
all things." Without attempting to fathom 
the exact meaning of these words, you may 
safely enough grasp with whole-hearted enthu- 
siasm the general idea of a vast and inimitably 
recuperative 'power in nature, a tendency to 
return from unstable to stable equilibrium, 
from miscarriage and frustration to fruition and 
victory, from death to life, from sin to right- 
eousness. Growth, and not decay, is the law 
of the universe. Restoration, and not de- 
struction, is the aim of God in this vast scheme 
of existence. Enumerate (if you only could) 
the times in which God has built you up from 
the ground. Reflect on the experiences in 
which he has set you on your feet, wiped your 
tears, reanimated your hopes, and from these 
perceive his method of the moral government 
of mankind. 

Went e*bety year to Jerusalem at the 
feast of the passover (Luke 2 : 41). 

IVTOT every fifth, or third, or every other 
year, but every year ! With the steadi- 
ness of the swing of the planets, and the 
changing phases of the moon, these faithful, 
consecrated Jewish people went to the house 
of God, and performed the sacred tasks of life. 
It is comparatively easy to do what we have to 
105 



do, and go where we have to go, but the su- 
preme test of a man is not so much in the dis- 
charge of obligatory as of voluntary and self- 
appointed tasks. When a man goes to the 
store six days in a week because he must, 
and stays at home from church on Sunday be- 
cause he can, there is a screw loose in him, 
and he'd better tighten it. God give us fewer 
brilliant, erratic, now-and-then men, but more 
faithful, steady, persistent, every-year-at-the- 
feast men, — men that go, rain or shine, thick 
or thin, snow or sun. A man is not half a 
man who does not do some things with his 
teeth clenched and his face set like a flint. 



Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto 
the children of Israel, that they go 
forward (Exod, 14 : 15), 

Y\0 NOT imagine that any one principle of 
*"^ life interprets the whole of it. Some 
one has just said comfortably to himself, "If 
all there is to life is just standing still and see- 
ing God do the business, I can manage pretty 
easily." But listen. There comes a time 
when this won't do. You cannot do much, 
but what you can do you must do. Where- 
fore do you stand there mumbling your use- 
less prayers to God ? Go forward. Draw 
xo6 



your sword. Open your furrow. Launch 
your ship. This thing awaiting your activity 
will not be done for you by God or man. 
Millions of sunbeams, forces of irresistible 
magnitude, spirits innumerable, are all around 
you, but not one of them will lift a finger to 
do that task. It is yours, not theirs. God 
will smite the Egyptians with plagues, he will 
roll back the waters of the Jordan, he will take 
off the wheels of the Egyptian chariots, but if 
you do not get a move on you, and go for- 
ward, God will not stir a single muscle in your 
leg. There are multitudes of fortunes being 
lost and lives being wrecked because men won'i 
"go forward.'' 

He that is faithful in a vety little Is 
faithful also in much {Luke 16 : 10). 

\17E GAIN self-confidence and the confi- 
™ " dence of others by the discharge of 
little trusts. What we do with them is a sign 
of what we shall do with others. A little spark 
is as hot as a big conflagration, and a little 
drop of water is as wet as a big flood. What 
a little chap does with his pennies is a pretty 
good sign of what he will do with his dollars. 
God trains us on littles. It was Corporal 
Tommie's handling his "squad" well that 
made the colonel think he would make a good 
107 



captain. It was handling his "company" well 
that made the general think he would make a 
good colonel, and so on away up to the top 
of the ladder. 

I fell at his feet as one dead (Pelt. 1 : 17). 

CURELY life, death, the universe, God, are 
^^ overpowering ; if one sees the true terror 
or the sublime beauty of existence, it is enough 
to strike him dumb or dead. To live amidst 
all these dangers and responsibilities and op- 
portunities, to know that one is moving resist- 
lessly forward into the eternities and infinities, 
that he is absolutely certain to see God face to 
face, that he will behold heaven or hell with his 
own eyes, is fearful! But God says, "Fear 
not." Live in trust. Exist in hope. Go 
forward. Yes, let us go forward. We are as 
safe in his hands as a drop of water in an 
ocean. 

The good things to come (Heb. 9 : It)* 

'"FHE good things (yes, the best things) are 
all " to come." The golden age of the 
world is not in the past, but the future. The 
richest blessings of the individual life are not 
in infancy and youth, but in maturity and old 
age ; not in this present life, but in the one to 
108 



which this is only the vestibule. You get away 
from Christ and his apostles in proportion as 
you live in the past, or in proportion as you 
distrust the future. To-morrow must be better 
than to-day, or, at any rate, next year than 
this. "The best is yet to be," and yet (mind 
this) this great law fulfils itself only to those 
who love the best, who believe in the best, and 
who seek the best. The physical eye only 
perceives the light or darkness which exists. 
The eye of the soul creates its own darkness 
and light ! 

A 

'Receive ye the Holy Spirit {John 20 : 22). 

'TO DOUBT the possibility of receiving the 
gift bestowed upon those apostles is to 
question the deepest experience of life. Let 
others tell you "how" you may receive it. 
Let me tell you that it is possible. A new 
spirit really takes possession of men. Call it 
by what name you will, cherish what theory 
you may about it, only believe in it, and strive 
to attain it ! There is a gate that can be 
opened to the stream of spiritual power that 
washes against your soul. There is a door 
through which the divine spirit can enter. 
Thereby men become stronger, purer, holier ! 
Stephen received it j Saul of Tarsus did ; so 
did Luther, Chalmers, Moody, and millions of 
109 



others. Do not measure yourselves by what 
strength you now possess. The soul is as ca- 
pable of receiving an outside force into itself 
as is the electric engine. 



This book of the law shall not depart 
out of thy mouth {Josh, I : 8). 

T T WOULD be a grand thing to know intel- 
lectually all the ethical and spiritual prin- 
ciples in the world, but it would be far better 
to know a few of them if they were always in 
your heart and mouth. Suppose a man sim- 
ply knew the Ten Commandments and the 
Beatitudes, but never for an instant lost con- 
sciousness of them, do you think that he would 
go far astray ? Life is fearfully intricate. No 
man could ever know too much to meet all the 
emergencies that might arise in being king, 
president, or emperor. But every day im- 
presses me anew with the fact that with the 
two simple laws of Jesus "in his heart and in 
his mouth," any man could pass safely through 
life in this world, and probably through the life 
of any other universe, without so much as 
stubbing a toe. It is ignorance of the laws of 
being, it is having to play the game of life 
without knowing its rules, that makes barbar- 
ism so dreadful. 

no 



He e was passing through {Luke 17 1 11). 

"\I 7HAT a rare and beautiful nature it is 
* * which never loses a chance to do good 
even when it is " passing through" ! Many 
of us do a few good deeds by making plans a 
good ways ahead, and become so absorbed in 
what we are aiming at that we never think of 
anything that happens on the way or while we 
are "passing through." Like a cannon-ball 
we pass by everything else, and go straight to 
the mark, well satisfied if we hit that. Jesus 
seemed to be alive to everything which hap- 
pened on the way. Many of his most beauti- 
ful deeds were what you might call mere 
"asides," like helping Lazarus and the Sa- 
maritan woman. 



cAnd Saul 'was consenting unto 
his death {Acts 8 : /). 

\ ITTLE BILL came home the other night 
*"** with his eyes sticking out of his head, 
and stuttered almost unintelligibly as he told 
his father how Tom Titmouse had broken into 
his mother's pantry and stolen dried plums. 
"Turn your pockets inside out, Little Bill," 
said his father, — and they were full of plums. 
"My son," he asked sternly, "don't you 
know that the partaker is as bad as the thief? " 

HI 



" No," said Little Bill in blank amazement. 
And he really didn' t ! Saul of Tarsus found 
it out to his sorrow when his spiritual eyes 
were opened. Oh, how little it takes to "give 
consent" to evil ! Holding other men's 
clothes does it. Holding our tongues does 
it. Keeping a secret does it. Sometimes an 
approving smile does it. We have been guilty 
a thousand times, when we ought to have 
spoken out, repudiated, spurned, denounced, 
some evil deed, and did not do it. 



The *word of Jehovah e was precious 
in those days (/ Sam* 3 : /)♦ 

T^HAT is a terrible infirmity in human nature 
that identifies preciousness with rareness. 
In reality the most common things are the 
most sacred. It is only in imagination that 
the rare possess such worth. Air, earth, and 
water are of infinitely more importance than 
emeralds, pearls, and rubies. If we should 
find a deposit of diamonds that made them 
as plenty as gravel, we should use them for 
roads without reluctance. When copies of 
the Bible were so few that they were chained 
to pillars in churches, people almost worshiped 
them like idols. But now, when they exist 
by millions, they value them as little as news- 

112 



papers. For one, I have deliberately set my- 
self the task of appreciating the common things 
of life. I am trying to give their true value to 
daisies, buttercups, robins, dogs, and horses. 
I don't want to despise geniuses like Paderew- 
ski and Tennyson and Browning ; but I want 
to love and appreciate common people. I 
want to feel that it is not only the thought, 
the emotion, the vision, that visits me on in- 
frequent and rare occasions, but those that 
haunt my common hours, that I ought to 
cherish as divine. 



*Peace be to this house (Luke 10 : 5). 

\ 1 7HAT a crime it is to introduce an element 
^* of discord into a human habitation! 
It is a divine art always to bring peace with us. 
We shall not do it without the most exquisite 
care and skill. Homes are full of explosives. 
The scratch of a cross word is like the touch 
of a match to a powder-mine. We do not 
know how we are rubbing people the wrong 
way unless we watch them closely. We may 
be innocent of any intention to make trouble, 
and yet be making it all the time. We had 
better "examine" ourselves if people grow 
silent when we come around, or if they leave 
the room. 

"3 



Re entered, as his custom was, into the 
synagogue on the sabbath day {Luke 4 : 16), 

O OCIETY is full of people who repudiate or 
*^ ignore the obligation of church attend- 
ance, and yet insist on retaining the name and 
privileges of the disciples of Jesus Christ. To 
me this is incomprehensible, unless the obli- 
gation on " the disciple to be as his master " 
has been annulled. If the great Head of our 
system of life and worship felt the need and 
maintained the habit of " entering the syna- 
gogue on the sabbath day," by what principle 
of reasoning can his professed followers escape 
this obligation ? ' ' As his custom was. ' ' How 
the sense of the bane and blessing oi "habit M 
deepens in us with increasing years ! Of all 
evils there is nothing comparable to a bad 
habit ; but of all beatitudes there is nothing 
so admirable as a good one. Force yourselves 
into doing good things until you do them 
either unconsciously or without disinclination. 
You can succeed at last, and when that end is 
attained you will have saved yourself infinite 
trouble. What can be more terrible than 
having to debate a duty every time its per- 
formance is called for? Settle it for good and 
all. Drive yourself into doing it until it is 
harder to leave it undone. I can't remember 
Wing seriously debated with myself a dozen 
imes in my life whether I should go " into the 
114 



synagogue on the sabbath day ' ' or not. It 
never occurs to me to raise the question. My 
parents got me so thoroughly into the church- 
going habit when I was a child that my legs 
would carry my head to church in spite of it- 
self. Some people will say, "That's slavery, 
and the man is a victim." Well, let them. 
Those same people would condemn the habit 
of a mother's bathing her baby daily, or a 
man's kissing his wife every morning when he 
started for his store. 



cAll the congregation . . . <were 
*with him (I Kings 8:5), 

\ 1 7HAT could he have done unless they had 
* * been "with him" ? Any leader is in- 
vincible when thus surrounded. But what 
can a general do on the field of battle with his 
army asleep in the barracks? What can a 
minister do with his congregation playing on 
the golf-links ? What can a teacher do with 
his class in the woods gathering chestnuts ? 
Sometimes it is the leader's fault if he cannot 
keep his followers "with him." But, unless 
I misread the symptoms of our modern social 
infirmities, there are times when multitudes of 
congregations have been stampeded by the 
devils of worldliness. There is this curious 
phenomenon, — that the greatest and wisest 
ii5 



leaders in church and Sunday-school are hav- 
ing about as hard work to keep the people 
"with them" as the least and feeblest. It's 
an inviolable maxim that the minister is help- 
less if the congregation does not ' ' stand by. ' ' 



cAnd there ariseth a great storm 
of 'wind {Mark 4 : 37). 

P\0 NOT think for a moment that the pres- 
*-^ ence of Jesus Christ in the ship of your 
life will keep the storms from blowing. There 
are moments of religious excitement when 
preachers and teachers lay the reins on the 
necks of their thought-horses and get run 
away with. We sometimes paint very rosy 
pictures of the voyage of life " with Jesus at 
the helm." We are so anxious to get our 
friends to embark that we call a very stormy 
ocean a quiet inland lake, and represent the 
happy voyagers as lolling on the decks and 
sailing on an even keel. That may be your 
way of getting to the desired haven, but it has 
not been mine. I have heard the wind howl 
through the rigging, and seen it split the sails. 
I have felt the waves wash over the gunwales. 
I have been hoisted by them until my ship has 
hit the clouds, and gone down into their 
troughs until the keel has scraped the bottom. 
116 



And I cannot yet say that I hope I'll never 
see another storm. I had almost as soon 
navigate a glue-pot as an ocean that never 
broke into white-caps. How should we value 
the haven without the tempest ? The disci- 
ples never would have heard the "Peace, be 
still," without the " great storm of wind." 



For thus it becometh us to fulfil 
all righteousness (cMatt. 3 : 15), 

" T ET us perform this deed [distasteful, 
*~* perhaps, to both of them, — to John, 
because of his conscious unworthiness, and to 
Jesus on account of its publicity] to meet the 
claims of a law above our own desires or 
wills." There is such a law for you and for 
me. There is an eternal fitness in things to 
which we must subordinate all individual 
preferences. The great stream of events is 
flowing in the channel of righteousness toward 
the goal of holiness. Within those banks we 
must order the course of our lives. Nothing 
is so sublime or satisfying as to do a thing 
simply because it is right ! The less you 
know about the why and wherefore of that 
Tightness, the more, profound is the joy of 
obedience. To go to death against all other 
inclinations but those of the soul towards duty. 



to go in the dark, to go contrary to all ap- 
parent reason, evidence, and even common- 
sense (as a fireman rushes into a burning 
building to save a deformed and dying child), 
— this, in spite of all argument to the contrary, 
fills a human soul with its greatest ecstasy. 
Whatever is right, do it, — do it all, do it to 
the last hair's-breadth. Fulfil all righteous- 
ness. Do not put a few stingy and regretful 
acts into the cup, but fill it full to the brim. 



c4s for me, it <was in my heart to 
build a. house (t Chron. 28: 2). 

TJOW much there is in every heart that 
never gets incorporated into word or 
deed ! And did you ever notice how men 
minimize the moral significance of their unreal- 
ized evil thoughts, and maximize the moral 
significance of their unrealized good thoughts? 
If it is "in a man's heart" to lie or steal or 
blaspheme or kill, he thinks but little less of 
himself, so long as his emotions did not become 
actions. But let a man have the most fleeting 
and sterile inclination to give a dollar to a 
cause, or lend a helpful hand to a beggar, or 
found a hospital for the sick, or build a church 
for the masses, and he actually thinks he is as 
good as if he had done it. It was in Little 
118 



Bill's heart to help his mama. A look of 
beatific self-satisfaction was on his face as he 
asked her, with all the air of a young courtier, 
1 ' Can' t I do something else ? ' ' when he had 
finished a trifling task. But when she said, 
"Yes, dear; you can clean the cellar," he 
humped his shoulders and looked like a thun- 
der-cloud. It really wasn't in his heart. It 
was only "in his eye." It's very hard to 
tell what's in your heart from what is only "in 
your eye." 

We %>ould that thou shouldest do for us 
r to>hatsoe ( ber %?e shall ask (Mark JO : 35). 

OVEN the best of them could not get rid 
of the desire for personal aggrandize- 
ment. It was not the reform of evils, but the 
advancement of self, that animated them. 
They restrained these feelings as long as they 
could, but they finally burnt out into sight. 
"Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy 
right hand, and one on thy left hand, in thy 
glory." Well, how much better are we ? We 
are less frank, but are we any less selfish ? 
Who of us loses sight of the preferment, pres- 
tige, and recognition that come through re- 
ligious and charitable work ? There is a story 
of two colored men in Washington who were 
appointed a committee to pick out a candidate 
119 



for an important political office. After a while 
one of them came back into the meeting, and 
asked for an extension of time. " Mr. Chair- 
man," he said very solemnly, "the committee 
is divided. Mr. Johnson, he's for hisself, and 
I'm for myself, and we're having hard work to 
get together ! " If we could get at the bot- 
tom facts of the failure of many benevolent 
enterprises, they could be summed up in this 
naive confession of the colored man, — "he's 
for hisself, and I'm for myself." 



And I will establish his kingdom for ever, if he be 
constant to do my commandments and 
mine ordinances, as at this day 
(/ Chron. 28 : 7). 

\\ 7HAT we want in manhood is not to spurt 
" ' like a geyser, but to flow like a water- 
fall. It is all right to see a man do his task 
"to-day," but we want to know if he did it 
yesterday and will do it to-morrow. He must 
have, not the spasmodic pull of a man drawing 
corks from bottles, but the eternal pull of 
gravity holding planets. If it were only cer- 
tain that every Sunday-school teacher and 
scholar who was in his place on "this" day 
would be in his place next Sunday and next 
year ! ■ ' Were man but constant, he were 

I20 



perfect," said Shakespeare. And, speaking 
sadly after studying human nature through a 
long lifetime, Confucius lamented: "A good 
man it is not mine to see. Could I see a man 
possessed of constancy, that would satisfy me." 
Most of us have only the constancy of the 
leech, which lets go at the instant when he has 
sucked all the blood he can hold. One some- 
times longs for men with the constancy of the 
bull-dog, which hangs on just for the sake of 
not letting go. 

cA man hawing a 'withered 
hand{8Matt. 12:10). 

|\J OT being a physician, I will not attempt 
to diagnose the trouble with this poor 
fellow. But the profession of the ministry has 
brought me into contact with many another 
withered hand (and, for that matter, withered 
head and withered heart), which I understand 
quite perfectly. No fact in nature is more 
familiar, and no law more demonstrable, than 
that of the withering up of all disused faculties 
or organs. It is known to science as atrophy. 
After a while nothing is left of a disused fac- 
ulty or organ but a vestige. Vestigial remains 
are mere tombstones, the pale memorials of 
powers that have now ceased to be. I know 
a rich man (many such) who has a withered 

121 



hand. He ceased to stretch it out to help his 
fellows, and now it is only a "vestigial re- 
main." He cannot use it when he tries. I 
know a woman (oh, multitudes !) who has a 
withered heart. She would not open it to the 
sorrows of others, and it has dried up until it 
rattles around in her breast like a pea in a pod. 
I know a boy (the woods are full of them) 
whose brain is withering up like a leaf on an 
August day. He won't study, and he has 
already got to a point where he can't think. 
Instead of the convolutions of his brain unfold- 
ing, they are continually contracting upon 
themselves. If he only knew the terror of it, 
the last thing on earth a fellow would want to 
become would be a "vestigial remain." 



They found him in the temple {Luke 2: 46). 

A ND a very good place it was to be found 
**• in. Where would you be most likely to 
be found if your friends should hunt for you ? 
When Little Bill " turns up missing" we can 
almost invariably locate him in a little ravine 
back of the church, " building a shanty" out 
of some old bricks and boards. There is a 
natural gravitation in every one of us toward 
some favorite occupation and locality. Every 
man goes " to his own place " — like Dives and 

122 



Lazarus. Some mothers always have to hunt 
for their boys on the street corners, or in the 
candy store where there is a slot machine. 
How many broken-hearted wives there are 
who make their way by a trained instinct to 
some saloon, when their husbands have to be 
hunted up at midnight ! Some have to follow 
them to the gambling hell. When you come 
to think about it, it's a pretty sharp test of 
character to ask a man's friends where he'd be 
most likely to be found. 



SMake his paths straight {Matt, 3: 3), 

TTWO of life's noblest occupations are those 
of the "pathfinder" and the "road- 
builder." To discover a route through an 
impenetrable wilderness, and to construct a 
highway of granite rocks or steel rails for com- 
merce and for travel, — both are very great. 
But it is still grander to break through a wil- 
derness of superstitions and mysteries, and lay 
a straight and broad highway to God. Abra- 
ham and Moses were road-builders in this 
sense, and so was John the Baptist. He 
opened the path over which Jesus walked, and 
which he widened to a great world highway up 
to heaven. And he broke it "straight. " No 
crooked, winding, sinuous, serpentine paths 

I2 3 



for him. He believed that men must go to 
God as the crow flies, or not at all. One of 
the tsars of Russia wanted a railroad construc- 
ted from St. Petersburg to Moscow. The 
engineers brought him a map with a line zig- 
zagging everywhere. " Why have you made 
it crooked ? " he asked. " To avoid hills and 
valleys, ' ' they replied. ' ' Build it this way, ' ' 
he said, laying a rule across the map and 
drawing a pencil along its edge. That is the 
way to build the pathway of a man's life. 
Make it straight, my boy ! 



cAnd they feared as they entered 
into the cloud {Luke 9 : 34). 

\I 7HAT a strange influence darkness and 
shadow have over us all ! I was never 
so scared in my life as when the Mt. Vesuvius 
elevator car shot right into a big black cloud. 
Wendell Phillips is authority for saying that 
' ' when geese enter a barn door they duck 
their heads, for fear of hitting the top sill." 
I know it is hard for us not to duck and crouch 
when we enter darkness of any kind, and espe- 
cially a cloud of sorrow. The whole discipline 
of life is to teach us how to enter every kind 
of darkness without a tremor. Do not be 
afraid of the night. Do not be afraid of a 
124 



thunder-cloud. Do not be afraid of a misfor- 
tune or a sorrow. Don't crouch. Don't 
tremble. Walk right into it with your head 
up. God is as near you in the dark as he is in 
the light. And this is the only real source of 
safety. You think you can take care of your- 
self in the daylight. You are mistaken. If 
God should withdraw from you a single mo- 
ment, it would be like withdrawing the air 
from under the bird. It is because his eye 
never slumbers nor sleeps, because his ever- 
lasting arms are everlastingly beneath us, that 
we are ever safe. 

The running of the foremost is like the 
running of Ahima&z (2 Sam. 18 : 27), 

CO, THEN, a man's personality reveals it- 
^ self in his gait when he is miles away, — 
does it ? Well, it ought to be a good gait, if 
it is so conspicuous and so distinguishable. 
Little Bill, "toed out," swung his hands like 
a pair of signboards in the wind, and carried 
his head bent far forward and low down like a 
Cayuse pony in a blizzard. Unfortunately he 
could not see himself, and the scoldings he 
had to take before he straightened up were — 
well, a few. How wonderful it is that you can 
tell a man by his gait at a mile's distance, or 
by his footfall on the pavement when he turns 
125 



a corner on a dark night ! Self-revelation is 
the law of life. You cannot hide yourself, 
Little Bill. What you are will disclose itself 
to those who are nigh, and even to those that 
are afar off. By and by your teacher will be 
able to tell your slovenly writing, and your 
employer your careless working, just by the 
look of your job. This morning's paper says 
that the police have been able to say, with 
complete assurance, that certain recent bur- 
glaries were done by a famous criminal known 
as " Slick Dick," just from their neatness and 
despatch. You had better not trifle with the 
matter of your personal identity, and you had 
better get a good gait. 



We toilea all night, and took 
nothing (Luke 5:5), 

O IMON was too good a fisherman to complain 
^ about his "luck." He had put in bad 
nights before, and knew he would have to do 
it again and often. Fishing is an art, but 
many a time " it goes by favor." There were 
times when even Isaak Walton could not get a 
bite. There are bad days for trout, and bad 
nights for eels. No, no ! the genuine fisher- 
man is not disheartened by bootless hours on 
the lake. And the genuine hero is not dis- 
heartened by bootless days and weeks and 
126 



months, or even years, of human endeavor. 
There are poor " times and seasons" in every 
business. One good year out of two or three 
is about all we may expect. But the tide 
turns. It's not all ebb. There is a flood as 
well. The greatest trouble with the most of 
us lies in the loss of faith in the pond. Go 
back again and again. Try a frog if the fish 
won't bite at a fly, and do not even disdain a 
worm. The ocean of life can never be fibhcd 
out. A fruitless night betokens a fruitful day. 



Give thy servant therefore an 
understanding heart to judge 
thy people (/ Kings 3:9), 

T N SPITE of a thousand nameless despots, 
there was never an age in human history 
when so many governors and presidents, 
princes and kings, emperors and monarchs, 
were praying that prayer of Solomon. The 
progress of the kingdom of God has taught the 
crowned heads of the civilized world that final 
lesson of royal wisdom, — that the people do 
not exist for the ruler, but the ruler for the 
people. It is this great lesson that has so- 
bered the souls of these men who are "dressed 
in a little brief authority." "A crown's 
enough to ripen any brain." On his death- 
bed Pericles said that he regarded it as his best 
127 



title to an honored memory " that he had 
never caused an Athenian to put on mourn- 
ing." Men like President Roosevelt, Em- 
peror William, the Tsar of all the Russias, and 
the new head of the Roman Catholic Church, 
whatever mistakes they make, and whatever 
personal ambitions they may have, are finding 
it impossible to forget that the destinies of 
millions of people are hanging on their lightest 
word. Power which used to make kings 
drunk now makes them sober. The promise 
of better days for the world lies in the fact that 
in so many royal closets the potentates of earth 
are praying the prayer of Solomon, "Give thy 
servant an understanding heart to judge this 
people. ' ' 

A 

We are not able to go up against the 
people; for they are stronger 
than <we (Num. 13 : 31)* 

\ I 7HAT if they were stronger ? Beat then. 
* * with your wits. What if they were 
wiser ? Beat them with your strength. I be- 
lieve it is a divine law to ' ' take a fellow bigger 
than your own size," to "aim at a higher 
mark than you can hit." If you never try to 
do things that you seem incapable of, you will 
accomplish no more than a mummy. The 
more I comprehend the magnitude and beauty 
128 



of the very simplest tasks of life, the more I 
feel my incapacity. One gets to shrink before 
them ; but he must never get to slink before 
them. Tackle any task that Providence im- 
poses, and any son of Anak that opposes. 
Believe in God, and believe in your own self 
as his instrument 



i« 9 



Minute Readings on the 
Great War 

"Somewhere in France." 

EVERY great epoch either creates new 
phrases or lends a new significance to old 
ones. Among the many which have become 
the very catch-words of this present era are 
these: "Somewhere in France," "In the 
Trenches," "Over the Top," "No Man's 
Land," "Gone West." Each one, we think, 
embodies in itself a multitude of those definite 
conceptions, or those vague and indefinable 
emotions excited by the profoundest agitation 
which has ever disturbed the equilibrium of 
the world. 

"Somewhere in France!" Could any other 
words more fittingly disclose the awful un- 
certainties of fife in this period of upheaval, 
disintegration and destruction? If any one 
thing seems absolutely necessary to our feel- 
ings of assurance, of stability, of reality, it is 
to be able to conceive of our loved ones in 
some fixed and known surroundings in the 
old homestead, in the little country village, 
in the store, the shop, the mill. The moment 
they disappear from view into a different en- 
131 



vironment, another village, state or country, 
they are robbed of a portion of their being 
and become like ghosts, like wraiths or appa- 
ritions. It is this, perhaps, that constitutes 
the greatest obstacle to our belief in the per- 
sistence of our beings after death. If we knew 
the background and the surroundings of those 
who had been translated to another sphere it 
would be a thousand times more easy to 
regard them as being still alive. 

Our sons, our brothers, our lovers, our 
husbands enlist, are stationed for a little 
while near some city which we know in cir- 
cumstances with which we easily become 
familiar, and so preserve their full identity. 
But suddenly they are embarked upon a ship 
and vanish like stars that have set, like flowers 
which have faded, like bubbles which have 
burst. Henceforth we only know that they 
exist "Somewhere in France!" But where? 
In Paris, amidst its fierce temptations, in 
some quiet little village, in a hospital, a 
trench, a battlefield — a grave? 

How hard it is to conceive them now! 
Such is their unsubstantiality as to seem like 
nothingness itself. They are "such stuff as 
dreams are made of," "the baseless fabric of 
a vision." Dissolved into a sort of phantom, 
we think about them rather than of them, 
and wonder whether they are real or not. 
132 



There is a modern song which we have often 
heard at funerals, and always with a sense of 
unrest and pain — "Beautiful Isle of Some- 
where," we think its title is. That "some- 
where" seems too much the synonym of 
nowhere! 

It is a military necessity. We cannot but 
admit that the places where our soldiers are 
encamped in France should be concealed. 
We do not want them bombed by aeroplanes, 
and must possess our souls in patience in 
their painful and futile efforts to hold them 
in our consciousnesses as existences real and 
true, but God speed the day when they may 
tell us where they truly, really are! Yes, God 
speed the day when we shall have them home 
again — Somewhere in America — at their old 
accustomed places at the table and by the 
fireside; in our arms as well as in our hearts; 
visible, audible, tangible, localized realities, 
and no longer phantoms, flitting about "Some- 
where in France." 



133 



"In the Trenches." 

WE almost dare assert that there is not a 
lip in the world from which has not 
fallen again and again that picturesque and 
pathetic phrase, "In the trenches." Perhaps 
there has never been another in the history of 
the race which has been so universal. By a 
sort of inevitability it has become the very 
symbol of modern warfare, of discomfort, of 
loyalty and of heroic endurance. It will 
probably be the richest and most permanent 
verbal legacy of the war. 

More than any other phrase it reveals the 
change which has taken place in military 
science. Without premeditation, so far as we 
know, the terrible necessities of the deadlock 
after the Battle of the Marne compelled the 
armies to dig themselves into the ground for 
security against the deadly perils of artillery 
fire. Upon the instant, in the twinkling of an 
eye, the strategy of war was revolutionized. 
Armies no longer contended in the open field, 
but under ground, "in dens and caves of the 
earth," like the heroes of the twelfth chapter 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Men were 
metamorphosed into moles. They retraced 
the tedious path of human progress from 
primeval ages, and in a moment of time be- 
came "cave men" the second time. Human 
i34 



beings who had been reared and who had 
dwelt in houses which were the products of 
long ages of ever-developing domestic archi- 
tecture, abodes of comfort and of luxury, 
descended into ditches streaming with mud 
and swarming with vermin, without complaint 
or protest, and adapted themselves to condi- 
tions fit only for mud turtles or for swine. 

The story of this change of habitat on the 
part of millions of civilized men is one of the 
immortal chapters in the book of human life. 
Their endurance, their patience, their cheer- 
fulness must challenge the admiration of their 
Creator, even. To wallow in mud up to one's 
armpits, to lie down to sleep in mud, to eat 
it, to breathe it, even; to waken suddenly 
with the sense of slimy creatures crawling 
over one's face; to have rats for one's hourly 
companions; to be devoured by mosquitoes; 
to become the daily breakfast, dinner and 
supper of more lice than plagued the Egyptians 
— this is what it is to be "in the trenches," but 
it is not all. It is, also, to peer through 
crevices into the night, or to lift one's head a 
little above a sandbag and get a bullet in one's 
brain. It is to trip over dead bodies half 
buried in the ooze; it is to confront horrors 
which are as unimaginable as they are in- 
describable, hour after hour, day after day, 
week after week, year after year. 
i35 



The pages of human history are crowded 
with illustrious stories of courage and endur- 
ance. In all ages men "have stopped the 
mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, 
escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness 
were made strong, waxed mighty in war, 
turned to flight the armies of aliens. Women 
received their dead by a resurrection, and 
others were tortured, not accepting deliver- 
ance, that they might obtain a better resur- 
rection. And others had trial of mockings 
and scourgings; yea, moreover, of bonds and 
imprisonments; they were stoned; they were 
sawn asunder; they were tempted; they were 
slain of the sword; they went about in sheep- 
skins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, 
tormented (of whom the world was not wor- 
thy), wandering in deserts and mountains and 
holes of the earth." 

They have done it before, it seems! They 
will do it again if need be! They are indom- 
itable — these men and women. There is 
nothing they will not do for some great ideal! 

By the sides of these trenches we stand with 
uncovered head. From those heroes wallowing 
in the mud we derive a new incentive. Covered 
with slime and ooze, they seem to us more 
noble than Kings and Princes in purple and 
fine linen. To such they are a warning and a 
threat. It is in those trenches that the doom 
of Kaisers will be written. 
136 



"Over the Top." 

IN every dramatic movement there must be 
a crisis. That one which begins "Somewhere 
in France," and is developed "In the trenches," 
culminates when the whistle blows and the 
waiting soldiers, unleashed like tigers in the 
arena, leap "Over the top" of the trenches. 
In that brief phrase is compressed more of 
action and emotion than in any other in the 
world to-day. There are not three words in 
all the Babel of languages spoken by the 
billion and a half of people on this earth a 
thousandth part so full of all that is bravest, 
noblest and most daring in the souls of men. 
However long the soldiers of this great war 
live, that moment of vaulting "Over the top" 
will be the supreme one in their mortal lives. 
Even across an ocean and in the peace and 
safety of these quiet homes and streets of 
America we cannot hear the shrill whistle of 
a policeman, a dog-catcher or a boy calling 
his companion without a sudden beating of 
the heart. What must it be to stand in one 
of those trenches, gun in hand and watch on 
wrist, awaiting that fateful signal? Those 
emotions have been described by brilliant 
writers who have personally endured the 
tremendous experience, but all of them testify 
that human language is incapable of convey- 
i37 



ing anything but the most vague and shadowy 
conception of the excitement of the soul in 
that brief interval of time. It must be so. 
How can feeble words make real the thunderous 
crash of cannon, the scream of shot and shell, 
the groans of dying men, the smell of burning 
powder and suffocating gas, the sight of 
bloody corpses which just a moment ago were 
living men, the ghastly strip of territory 
known as "No Man's Land," the barrage of 
fire going before the advancing columns as 
the pillar of smoke and fire swept on before 
the Israelites of old, the barbed wire fences, 
men stabbing each other with bayonets — God! 
it is inconceivable as well as indescribable. 

We have read of a delicate English boy who 
crumpled up with terror and fell flat in the 
trench when that horrible whistle sounded. 
His captain, finding him there, and realizing 
that he would be courtmartialed and shot, 
threw him bodily "Over the topi" And then 
he fought! Good heavens, how he fought! 
Something burst within his spirit and he 
"saw red." 

Other experiences have also disclosed the 
incorruptible and unconquerable courage of 
the souls of men — slow crucifixion, exposure 
to lions in the arena, burnings at the stake. 
Other adventures of men have been terrible 
and thrilling. But nothing else has ever 
138 



moved us to profoundly as that of these peace- 
loving sons and brothers of ours pulling their 
scattered faculties together, stilling the fierce 
throbbing of their pulses, conquering their 
wild terror, and with one mad, glorious effort 
leaping over the top of those trenches into the 
storm of shot and shell. We have always 
reverenced human nature, but it is hard not 
to adore it now. 

Other phrases have expressed and illustrated 
the courage and devotion of men, but it will 
be ages before any other will displace from 
our daily conversation this one as a symbol 
of the majesty of the spirit which dwells 
within us in the transcendental moments of 
our lives. 

"Over the top!" Over the top of trenches 
on the field of battle; over the top of obstacles 
in the path of progress; over the tops of the 
waves of sorrow that threaten to engulf us; 
over the top of the great divide that separates 
us from the final home of the soul. 

Life will be richer and larger for that phrase. 



139 



"No Man's Land." 

SO far as we have been able to learn, this 
is a phrase which had never before — or 
generally, at least — been applied to that nar- 
row belt of land which lay between two armies. 
Perhaps it is because in other wars it was a 
rapidly shifting territory, or because it was 
a wider and less distinctly marked terrain. 
No sooner, however, had trench warfare been 
developed and armies begun to dig themselves 
in and get closer and closer together, until 
they could speak to each other across the 
narrow dividing space, then this phrase sprang 
into universal use. 

"No Man's Land!" The territory in dis- 
pute, the little belt of open country which 
neither army could appropriate until it had 
been drenched with human blood — the few 
rods or yards or feet for the possession of 
which hundreds of thousands and even millions 
of men were ready to sacrifice their lives. 

Small wonder that this narrow, open road- 
way, running for scores and scores of miles 
(like a farmer's lane over which the cows 
came lowing home with udders full of milk), 
between two lines of frowning fortifications 
(behind which hide two armies thirsting for 
each other's blood), should have clothed itself 
with mystery and irresistibly appealed to the 
140 



imagination of the soldiers! "No Man's 
Land!" The land of the unknown and the 
accidental. The land of contingency, of 
chance, of uncertainty, where the wheel of 
fortune hung calmly and silently upon her 
axle, waiting for the hand of Destiny to give 
it the fateful whirl. 

What scenes have been witnessed in "No 
Man's Land!" What deeds of derring-do 
have been done in that narrow lane! Above 
it shriek the shells of the covering barrage; 
across it sweeps the hail of shrapnel and of 
machine guns; over it rolls the wave of as- 
phyxiating gas. It is webbed with barbed 
wire fencing. It is punctured with shell holes. 
In the silent midnight heroes creep upon it 
bellywise like snakes, stealthily seeking in- 
formation, erecting obstacles, searching for 
dead or wounded comrades, grappling with 
foes as invisible as themselves. 

In the daytime — heaven help them — by the 
thousands and hundreds of thousands living 
men (as sensitive to the joys of life, to light, 
to love, to beauty, to happiness, as you or I) 
leap into it over the tops of trenches to shoot, 
to bayonet, to club each other to the death, 
tearing and rending one another like the 
creatures of a primeval world. 

"No Man's Land!" Deeds have been done 
there at which the sun and the moon and the 
141 



stars must have shuddered, at which midnight 
must have paled and angels wept. And there, 
also, deeds have been done at whose sublimity 
the eyes of generations yet unborn will shed 
their tears of wonder and of admination. 

"No Man's Land!" In every struggle of 
ideas and of ideals, of opinions and of judg- 
ments, there is such an unoccupied and dis- 
puted territory. Between denominations, be- 
tween sects, between parties, between theories, 
between nations, between races, it stretches 
itself an object of passionate desire and 
struggle. There was "No Man's Land" be- 
tween Christianity and paganism, between 
feudalism and nationalism, between aboli- 
tionism and slav eholding. There is to-day a 
"No Man's Land" between prohibition and 
the liquor interests, between autocracy and 
democracy, between Socialism and individ- 
ualism, between labor and capital. 

Gradually, inevitably, intermittently the 
struggle for possession of the disputed territory 
goes on and on and on. 

And the right is slowly gaining ground! 



142 



"Gone West" 

\y/AS it dread of that harsh word "death," 
W or the ineradicable sense of humor, or 
that supernal consciousness of beauty in the 
soul of youth which gave birth to that ex- 
quisite metaphor of the trenches/ 'Gone West"? 

Death as the setting of a sun, a moon, or 
star! Nothing was ever finer, nothing ever 
lovelier, nothing ever more consoling, for they 
set, to rise again. And so do the souls of 
heroes. "I believe with all my soul; I know," 
exclaimed Tolstoi at 80 , "that dying I shall 
be happy — I shall enter a world more real." 
And Victor Hugo once broke forth in a sort 
of rapture: "I am the tadpole of an arch- 
angel!" Perhaps it was the same conscious- 
ness of an indestructible something within 
these perishable bodies of ours which made 
these glorious youths of the Flanders front 
create, or at least give, such wide currency to 
a phrase that can never die. 

Measure, if you can, the spiritual value of 
that phrase in this ghastly era of destruction 
and of death! To how many a soldier dying 
alone in "No Man's Land" it must have given 
hope. To what multitudes of those who mourn 
the loss of sons and brothers, husbands and 
lovers, it must have breathed a heavenly con- 
solation. "He is not dead, but sleepeth." He 
i43 



is not dead; his star has set to rise again. 
"He has gone West!" 

If that imperishable hope which animates 
the heart of all Christendom is based upon 
reality (and there can no more be a great hope 
without some actual foundation than there 
can be a shadow without a substance, or a 
quality without a substratum of being), it 
would be a memorable vision to see the 
ethereal spirits of those young gladiators es- 
caping from their dead bodies, rising into the 
air and "Going West!" 

We have seen in golden autumns, while the 
breezes shook the tree tops and agitated the 
grasses in the meadows, myriads of feathery, 
buoyant, gossamer-like seeds released from 
their imprisoning sheaths and sailing away 
upon the wings of the wind, to impregnate 
distant and sterile fields with their super- 
abundant life. 

God has determined for some wise reason of 
His own to conceal from our eyes a phenom- 
enon infinitely more imposing, the flight of 
those beautiful souls which He transplants to 
the gardens of Paradise, but being invisible is 
no evidence of being unreal. Always and 
everywhere it is the unseen, the inaudible and 
the intangible which is the actual and which 
alone survives. 

"He is not dead, but sleepeth!" The seed 
144 



dies into a new life, and so does man. The 
caterpillar withdraws into the chrysalis to 
emerge a butterfly. The stars set to rise 
again. It is this sublime faith, or gleaming of 
hope, or inextinguishable desire in the hearts 
of these youthful warriors which has trans- 
lated that grim word death into that brilliant 
and triumphant phrase, "Gone West," and 
given inspiration and courage to him who 
wrote that greatest poem of the war, "I Have 
a Rendezvous With Death:" 

I have a rendezvous with Death 

At some disputed barricade, 

When spring comes back with nestling shade 

And apple blossoms fill the air — 

I have a rendezvous with Death 

When spring brings back blue days and fair. 

It may be he shall take my hand 

And lead me into his dark land, 

And close my eyes and quench my breath — 

It may be I shall pass him still. 

I have a rendezvous with Death 
On some scarred slope of battered hill, 
When spring comes round again this year 
And the first meadow flowers appear. 

God knows 'twere better to be deep 
Pillowed in silk and scented down, 
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep, 
Pulse right to pulse and breath to breath, 
Where hushed awakenings are dear. 

145 



But I've a rendezvous with Death 
At midnight, in some flaming town, 
When spring trips north again this year. 
And I to my pledged word am true, 
I shall not fail my rendezvous. 



146 



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